To G. R. Gray [20 November – 11 December 1840]
12 Upper Gower St
Friday
My dear Sir
I have been obliged to defer from the state of my health, until to day, the pleasure of thanking you for your very obliging present of your volume of the Genera of Birds.1 It is a work, which cannot fail, I should think, of being very useful to ornithologists & indeed to describers in other branches of Natural History.
I trust now you have completed this work, you will oblige me by kindly finishing the remaining M.S. for the Birds of Beagles Voyage.— I had hoped before this to have finished that part, but I have of late been so frequently unwell that all my plans have disarranged.2
I shall esteem it a great favour should you be able to finish at once Gould’s M.S.3 & Believe me, | My dear Sir | with many thanks | Yours very truly | Chas. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Birds: Pt 3 of The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. By John Gould. Edited and superintended by Charles Darwin. London: Smith, Elder and Co. 1839–41.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Gray, George Robert. 1840. A list of the genera of birds, with an indication of the typical species of each genus. London: Richard and John E. Taylor.
Summary
Thanks GRG for his gift [A list of the genera of birds (1840)] and trusts that now GRG will be able to finish John Gould’s MS for Zoology.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-581
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- George Robert Gray
- Sent from
- London, Upper Gower St, 12
- Source of text
- The British Library (Egerton MS 2348: 237–8)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 581,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-581.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 2
