From G. J. Romanes 5 November 1880
November 5, 1880.
I was sorry to hear on my return from Scotland that I had missed the pleasure of a call from you,1 and also to hear from Mr. Teesdale to-day that you had returned to Down, owing, he fears, to the alarming condition of Miss Wedgwood.2 I trust, however, that her state of health may not be so serious as he apprehends.
On my way South I stayed for a couple of days at Newcastle, to give two lectures on Mental Evolution, and hence my absence when you called.3 I stayed with Mr. Newall, who has the monster telescope, and ‘as good luck would have it, Providence was on my side,’ in the matter of giving us a clear sky for observing, rather a rare thing at Newcastle.4
You will be glad to hear that our season’s work at the ‘Zoological station’ has been very successful. A really interesting research has been conducted by Ewart and myself jointly on the locomotor system of Echinoderms, he taking the morphological and I the physiological part.5 When next I see you I shall tell you the principal points, but to do so in a letter would be tedious.
I think it is probable that Mivart and I shall have a magazine battle some day on Mental Evolution, as I think it is better to draw him in this way before finally discussing the whole subject in my book.6
Footnotes
Bibliography
[Butler, Samuel.] 1872a. Erewhon, or, Over the range. London: Trübner.
Romanes, George John. 1882a. Animal intelligence. International Scientific Series, vol. 41. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.
Romanes, George John. 1883a. Mental evolution in animals: with a posthumous essay on instinct by Charles Darwin. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
Romanes, George John and Ewart, James Cossar. 1881. Observations on the locomotor system of Echinodermata. [Read 24 March 1881.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 172: 829–85.
Summary
Lectured on mental evolution in Newcastle.
Has conducted interesting research on locomotor systems of echinoderms.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-12799
- From
- George John Romanes
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- E. D. Romanes 1896, pp. 99–100
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12799,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12799.xml