Darwin, C. R. to Hope, F. W.
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Discusses insect specimens he left with FWH. Asks if he may state on FWH's authority that a third or a half of the specimens from Sydney and Hobart Town are undescribed – a striking fact, showing imperfect knowledge of the insects in the close neighbourhood of the two Australian capitals.
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Transcription
[36 Great Marlborough Street]
Dear Hope
I called yesterday on you and left a tin box with a few Hobart Town beetles, which I
had neglected to put with the others. Is not there not a chrysomela among them, very
like the English species which feeds on the Broom.— I have spoken to
Waterhouse about the Australian insects; you can have them when you like.— The
collections in the pill boxes come from Sydney, Hobart town, and King George's
Sound.— Do you want all orders for your work?. Some are already I believe in
the hands of M
Floreat Entomologia | Yours most truly | Chas.
Darwi<n>
Wednesday
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- f1 362.f1
Francis Walker, an expert in the taxonomy of Hymenoptera, described CD's collection of Chalcididae (parasitic Hymenoptera) in a series of articles between 1838 and 1843 (see Collected papers 2: 297–9) and in volume 2 of his Monographia Chalciditum (F. Walker 1839). - +
- f2 362.f2
Waterhouse 1837–40a (read 5 December 1836) and 1837–40b (read 2 January 1837). - +
- f3 362.f3
Hope had read a paper at the Entomological Society on 1 May 1837 describing some Caribidae collected by CD (Hope 1837–40, pp. 128–31). No further descriptions of CD's specimens appear to have been published by Hope. A note in DAR 118: 19 indicates that he was sent, in addition to Caribidae, insect specimens from ‘Australia | Van Diemen's Land | King George's Sound’, while George Robert Waterhouse was given ‘minute insects from d[itt]o’.