To H. N. Moseley 4 February 1879
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Feb. 4th 1879
Dear Moseley
I have at last read every word of your book, & it has excited in me greater interest than any other scientific book which I have read for a long time.—1 You will perhaps be surprised how slow I have been, but my head prevents me reading except at intervals. If I were asked which parts had interested me most, I shd. be somewhat perplexed to answer.
I fancy that the general reader would prefer your account of Japan. For myself I hesitate between your discussions & description of the Southern ice, which seem to me admirable, & the last chapter which contained many facts & views new to me. Though I had read your papers on the stony Hydroid Corals, yet your resumé made me realise better than I had done before, what a most curious case it is.—2 You have also collected a surprising number of valuable facts bearing on the dispersal of plants,—far more than in any other book known to me.—3
In fact your volume is a mass of interesting facts & discussions, with hardly a superfluous word; & I heartily congratulate you on its publication.
Your Dedication makes me prouder than ever.—4
Believe me | yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Moseley, Henry Nottidge. 1875a. Notes on plants collected and observed at the Admiralty Islands, March 3 to 10, 1875. [Read 16 December 1875.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 15 (1877): 73–82.
Moseley, Henry Nottidge. 1875b. On the structure and relations of the alcyonarian Heliopora cærulea, with some account of the anatomy of a species of Sarcophyton, notes on the structure of species of the genera Millepora, Pocillopora, and Stylaster, and remarks on the affinities of certain palæozoic corals. [Read 25 November 1875.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 166 (1876): 91–129.
Moseley, Henry Nottidge. 1878. The Croonian lecture.— On the structure of the stylasteridæ, a family of the hydroid stony corals. [Read 28 February 1878.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 169: 425–503.
Moseley, Henry Nottidge. 1879. Notes by a naturalist on the ‘Challenger’, being an account of various observations made during the voyage of H.M.S. ‘Challenger’ round the world, in the years 1872–1876. London: Macmillan and Co.
Summary
Comments on HNM’s book [Notes by a naturalist on the "Challenger" (1879)].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11858
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Henry Nottidge Moseley
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Christie’s, London (dealers) (online 31 October – 8 November 2018, lot 13)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11858,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11858.xml