To J. H. Gilbert 25 February 1881
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.) [4 Bryanston Street, London.]
Feb. 25th 1881
Dear Dr Gilbert
I am very much obliged to you for your note, which will make me much more cautious than I shd. otherwise perhaps have been.—1 I do not think that the acidity of the contents of the alimentary canal of worms can be due to uric acid, for they begin to be acid so high up, even slightly so in the gizzard, & the acidity is not due to the digestive fluid, which is of the nature of the pancreatic secretion.— It was partly out of mere natural curiosity which made me desirous to know whether common vegetable mould was acid, & whether my testing was correct.2 I shd. like to see Detmer’s paper & How Crops Grow, if you are sure you can spare them for a week or fortnight, for I read German very slowly.—3
Please address parcel to me “Orpington Stn. S.E.Ry.”.—
I am writing this away from home, but shall return next Thursday.—4
Many thanks for the little article about Bread;— I suspected how the case stood. Many years ago Prof. Henslow tried labourers with white & brown bread & came to your conclusion.—5
Thanks, also, for your Address, which I read with the greatest interest as it appeared in Nature.—6
Pray believe me | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Burnett, John. 2005. Brown is best. History Today 55 (May 2005): 52–4.
Detmer, Wilhelm. 1871. Die natürlichen Humuskörper des Bodens und ihre landwirthschaftliche Bedeutung. (Mittheilungen aus dem agriculturchemische Laboratorium der Universität Leipzig, VI.) Die Landwirtschaftlichen Versuchs-Stationen 14: 248–300.
Gilbert, Joseph Henry. 1880. [Presidential address on agricultural chemistry to the chemical science section.] Report of the 50th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Swansea (1880), Transactions of sections, pp. 507–33.
Johnson, Samuel William. [1870.] How crops feed: a treatise on the atmosphere and the soil as related to the nutrition of agricultural plants. New York: Orange Judd and Company.
Russell-Gebbett, Jean. 1977. Henslow of Hitcham: botanist, educationalist and clergyman. Lavenham, Suffolk: Terence Dalton.
Summary
Discusses acidity of earthworm castings. JHG’s reply will make him more cautious.
Would like to see W. A. Detmer’s paper [Landwirtsch. Versuchs-Stat. 14 (1871): 248–300] and S. W. Johnson’s work [How crops feed].
Comments on food value of white and brown bread.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13066
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Joseph Henry Gilbert
- Sent from
- London, Bryanston St, 4
- Source of text
- Rothamsted Research (GIL13)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13066,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13066.xml