To George Bentham 23 June 1868
Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.
June 23 /68/
My dear Mr. Bentham
As your Address is somewhat of the nature of a verdict from a Judge, I do not know whether it is proper for me to do so, but I must and will thank you for the pleasure which you have given me.1 I am delighted at what you say about my book.2 I got so tired of it, that for months together I thought myself a perfect fool for having given up so much time in collecting & observing little facts, but now I do not care if a score of common critics speak as contemptuously of the book as did the Athenæum.3 I feel justified in this, for I have so complete a reliance on your judgment that I feel certain that I should have bowed to your judgment had it been as unfavourable, as it is the contrary.— What you say about the pangenesis quite satisfies me, & is as much, perhaps, as any one is justified in saying—4 I have read your whole Address with the greatest interest. It must have cost you a vast amount of trouble.—
With cordial thanks | Pray believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
I fear that it is not likely that you have a superfluous copy of your address: if you have I shd much like to send one to Fritz Müller5 in the interior of Brazil.
By the way let me add that I discussed bud-variation chiefly from belief which is common to several persons, that all variability is related to sexual generation; I wished to show clearly that this was an error.—6
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bentham, George. 1868. Anniversary address. [Read 25 May 1868.] Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (1867–8): lvii–c.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Expresses thanks and pleasure at what GB has said about his book [Variation] in GB’s [Presidential] Address [to the Linnean Society, 1868, Proc. Linn. Soc. Lond. (1868): lvii–c]. "What you say about Pangenesis quite satisfies me".
CD discussed "bud-variation" to show that it was an error to believe all variability is due to sexual generation.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6258
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- George Bentham
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Bentham Correspondence, Vol. 3, Daintree–Dyer, 1830–1884, GEB/1/3: f. 677)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6258,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6258.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16