To John Lubbock [before 5 February 1861]1
[Down]
Saturday night
My dear Lubbock
Your paper seems to me very clear & interesting.2 The subject is too deep for me to offer any remarks. Except indeed to raise my voice in highest tone against your quoting difficult German passage. Surely you ought to translate them; otherwise they will be skipped by 99 out of 100 readers.—3
I hardly know what to say or think about your concluding speculations. I should grieve to see them struck out; & such speculations always call vivid attention to any facts. Yet they seem rather bold & to rest on scanty basis.— I fear that they might lead the old sober coaches to call you rash.—4
Yet I daresay if I had written them myself, I shd have been enamoured with them & would not have given them up for any body. The passage on last long page seems somehow rather less bold than the actually concluding sentences. On last long page do you not leave impression that difference in eggs does go with agamogenesis?5 All I can say is that I am loth to see so fine a speculation cancelled at present, yet I tremble for you.—
Yours affectly | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Farley, John. 1982. Gametes & spores: ideas about sexual reproduction, 1750–1914. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rothschild, Nathaniel Mayer Victor. 1965. A classification of living animals. 2d ed. London.
Summary
Comments on JL’s paper ["Notes on the generative organs, and on the formation of the egg in the Annulosa", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 11 (1860–2): 117–24].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3038
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Lubbock, 4th baronet and 1st Baron Avebury
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 263: 40c (EH 88206451)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3038,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3038.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9