skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To Raphael Meldola   12 March 1881

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

March 12th 1881.

Dear Mr. Meldola

It is very kind of you to offer to send me the book, but I feel sure that it could not have belonged to my grandfather.—1 My eldest brothers name is Erasmus & he attended to chemistry when young, & I suppose that the “Annals of Philosophy” was left at my Father’s house & sold with the Library which belonged to my sisters.—2

I will look to the few words of Preface to Weismann, whenever I receive a proof.—3

with many thanks— | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

1
No letter from Meldola offering to send a book has been found. CD’s grandfather was Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802).
2
Erasmus Alvey Darwin had attended chemistry lectures while a student at Cambridge; he built a small laboratory in the tool house in the garden of the family home at Shrewsbury, and he and CD performed experiments there (see Correspondence vol. 1, letter from E. A. Darwin, 14 November 1822 and n. 1). CD’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, had built his house, The Mount, Shrewsbury, around 1800 (Browne 1995, pp. 9–10). His unmarried daughters at the time of his death were Susan Elizabeth Darwin and Catherine Darwin. After Susan died in 1866, the house and contents were sold (see Correspondence vol. 15, letter from Salt & Sons, 17 July 1867). The journal Annals of Philosophy was published from 1813 until 1827, when it merged with the Philosophical Magazine; the name changed to the Philosophical Magazine: or Annals of Chemistry, Mathematics, Astronomy, Natural History, and General Science.
3
CD wrote a short ‘Prefatory notice’ to Studies in the theory of descent (Weismann 1880–2, pp. v–vi), Meldola’s translation of August Weismann’s Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie (Weismann 1875–6).

Bibliography

Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin. Voyaging. Volume I of a biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Weismann, August. 1875–6. Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie. 2 vols. I. Ueber den Saison-Dimorphismus der Schmetterlinge; II. Ueber die letzten Ursachen der Transmutationen. 1. Die Entstehung der Zeichnung bei den Schmetterlings-Raupen, 2. Ueber den phyletischen Parallelismus bei metamorphischen Arten, 3. Ueber die Umwandlung des mexikanischen Axolotl in ein Amblystoma, 4. Ueber die mechanische Auffassung der Natur. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

Weismann, August. 1880–2. Studies in the theory of descent. Translated by Raphael Meldola. 3 parts. Part I (1880): On the seasonal dimorphism of butterflies. Part II (1881): The origin of the markings of caterpillars. On phyletic parallelism in metamorphic species. Part III (1882): The transformation of the Mexican axolotl into amblystoma. On the mechanical conception of nature. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.

Summary

Will proof-read his preface to Weismann’s Studien.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13093,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13093.xml

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge