To Thomas Henry Huxley 17 July [1851]
Down Farnborough Kent
July 17th—
My dear Sir
I beg to thank you for your very kind note of the 10th. & your Report,1 which has interested me much, as I was ignorant & wished to learn about the metamorphoses of the Class in question.— I agree with your fundamental distinction between individuals & zooids,2 but I doubt whether it can be expected that creatures having so plainly the stamp of individuality as have many of your zooids will ever cease to be called individuals.
With many thanks | Pray believe me | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin T. H. Huxley Esqe
Footnotes
Bibliography
Farley, John. 1982. Gametes & spores: ideas about sexual reproduction, 1750–1914. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Winsor, Mary Pickard. 1976. Starfish, jellyfish and the order of life: issues in nineteenth-century science. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Summary
Thanks for report [on echinoderms, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 2d ser. 8 (1851): 1–19]. Wanted to learn about metamorphosis of the class. Agrees with THH’s distinction between individuals and zooids, but thinks zooids will never cease to be called individuals.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-1442
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Thomas Henry Huxley
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 2)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1442,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1442.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 5