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Darwin Correspondence Project

To John Lubbock   10 [September 1853]1

Down Bromley Kent

10th

Dear Lubbock

Did I understand you rightly that you had lately seen somewhere a Paper on the metamorphoses of the Pycnogons?2 I want to tell Mr C. S. Bate where, that is if my memory is right & you did tell me.— Will you take the trouble to send me one line?— I hope you are prosperous. I am much knocked up with Mr Sowerby.3

Ever your’s | C. Darwin

Footnotes

Quatrefages de Bréau 1842. John Lubbock had for the past year been studying the Crustacea. In 1853 he published three papers describing new species of Calanidae, including specimens CD collected on board the Beagle (Lubbock 1853a, 1853b, and 1853c). Lubbock, however, may have sent Bate a more recent and extended work, for in Bate 1855, p. 39, Bate stated: ‘Since the present paper was communicated to the Linnæan Society, the author has had the opportunity, through the kindness of Mr. J. Lubbock, of perusing Dana’s great work on Crustacea’. Dana treated the Pycnogonida (which he classed as a family of the arachnoid Entomostraca but which is now ranked as a separate class) in Dana 1852–3, pt 2, pp. 1382–91. See also letter to J. D. Dana, 27 September [1853].
In the last half of 1853, CD’s Account book (Down House MS) has several entries for payments to George Brettingham Sowerby Jr, including a large sum on 17 September, for drawings and plates for both Fossil Cirripedia (1854) and Living Cirripedia (1854). The total for 1853 was given as £57 12s. 9d., less the £42 that CD had already advanced to Sowerby through the Ray Society (see letter to J. S. Bowerbank, 28 September [1851], n. 3, for details of part of the loan).

Bibliography

Bate, Charles Spence. 1855. On the homologies of the carapace and on the structure and function of the antennæ in Crustacea. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 2d ser. 16: 36–46.

Fossil Cirripedia (1854): A monograph of the fossil Balanidæ and Verrucidæ of Great Britain. By Charles Darwin. London: Palaeontographical Society. 1854.

Summary

Asks about source of paper on the metamorphosis of Pycnogonida for C. S. Bate.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-1365
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.97)
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1365,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1365.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 5

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