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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Francis Galton   7 April 1880

Down, | Beckenham, Kent | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Ap 7 1880

My dear Galton,

The enclosed letter and circular may perhaps interest you, as it relates to a queer subject.1 You will perhaps say hang his impudence. But seriously the letter might possibly be worth taking some day to the Anthropolog Inst for the chance of someone caring about it. I have written to Mr. Faulds telling him I could give no help, but had forwarded the letter to you on the chance of its interesting you.2

My dear Galton, | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. The more I think of your visualising enquiries, the more interesting they seem to me.3

Footnotes

CD enclosed the letter from Henry Faulds, 16 February 1880, and the sample form with hand prints that Faulds had included with his letter.
See letter to Henry Faulds, 7 April 1880. Galton was a fellow of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 30 (1900): 8).
In late 1879, Galton had sent CD a questionnaire on the faculty of visualising, which CD filled in and returned (see Correspondence vol. 27, letter from Francis Galton, 12 November 1879, and letter to Francis Galton, 14 November [1879]). Galton published the results of his survey in ‘Statistics of mental imagery’ in the July 1880 issue of Mind (Galton 1880a).

Bibliography

Galton, Francis. 1880a. Statistics of mental imagery. Mind 5: 301–18.

Summary

Encloses letter [see 12488] and circular from Henry Faulds [regarding thumb impressions]. Anthropology Institute may care about it.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12565
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Francis Galton
Sent from
Down
Source of text
UCL Library Services, Special Collections (GALTON/3/2/1/24)
Physical description
C 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12565,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12565.xml

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