To T. C. Eyton 26 [June 1857]1
Moor Park, Farnham | Surrey
26th
Dear Eyton
Your letter has been forwarded to me here, where I am staying at a Hydropathic establishment as my health has lately been very indifferent.— I thank you for the reference on Hybrid & for your very kind note.—2 I am delighted to hear what fine Natural History prospect you have before you.—
It is a new & interesting line on the growth of Bones of Birds: I was not at all aware that there was anything peculiar in that subject.3 My confounded health interferes terribly with all my work, but yet I am making steady progress in my Book on Variation of Species. & on domestic varieties.
As you are a great man for Horses, you might aid me, if not irksome to you, by looking out in Ireland or elswhere for any cases of Horses or Ponies with transverse bars on legs like those of zebra, or on shoulder & along the back, as with the ass. These stripes sometimes occur in duns, & mouse-coloured & chesnut horses; & I shd. be infinitely obliged for any cases of this kind.—4
I shd. most thoroughily enjoy visiting you at Eyton; but I am not likely to be in Shropshire soon.—
Pray believe me | Dear Eyton | Yours very truly | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Summary
Ill.
Comments on TCE’s study of birds’ bones.
His work on variation progresses.
Asks about horses with bars like zebra or ass.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2113
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Thomas Campbell Eyton
- Sent from
- Moor Park
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.147)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2113,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2113.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6