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To James Torbitt   4 April 1876

Down,

April 4, 1876.

Dear Sir

I thank you for your very obliging letter and present of the essay and seeds.1 I cannot but think that the principle on which you are acting is right, and if you succeed you will have conferred an enormous benefit on the public.2 I am sorry that I was compelled to decline my answer being published, for I cannot to the present hour remember what I said3

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin.

Footnotes

1
See letter from James Torbitt, 1 April 1876. Torbitt sent his pamphlet on potato blight, Torbitt 1876, which was accompanied by a packet of seeds. CD’s copy and the seeds have not been found.
2
Torbitt proposed that growing potatoes from seed and collecting seeds from plants that resisted disease over successive generations was the best way to improve yields (Torbitt 1876, pp. 3–4).
3
See letter from James Torbitt, 1 April 1876 and n. 2. Torbitt wanted to publish CD’s reply to the question ‘what is an individual?’, contained in the letter to James Torbitt, 26 January 1876.

Bibliography

Torbitt, James. 1876. Cras credemus. A treatise on the cultivation of the potato from the seed, having for proposed results the extinction of the disease, and a yield of thirty, forty or more tons of tubers per statute acre. (Sent, accompanied by a packet of seed, to each member of the House of Lords; each member of the House of Commons; and the principal landlords of Ulster.) Belfast: printed by Alexander Mayne.

Summary

Thanks for essay [Cras credemus: a treatise on the cultivation of the potato from the seed, having for proposed results the extinction of the disease (1876)] and seeds. Thinks principle on which JT is acting is right.

Cannot allow publication of his earlier letter [10368], as he cannot recall what he wrote.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-10440
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
James Torbitt
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 148: 92
Physical description
C 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10440,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10440.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 24

letter

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