To Ernst Haeckel 25 September 1873
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
Sep 25. ’73
My dear Häckel,
I thank you for the present of your book, & I am heartily glad to see its great success.1 You will do a wonderful amount of good in spreading the doctrine of Evolution, supporting it as you do, by so many original observations. I have read the new preface with very great interest. The delay in the appearance of the English translation vexes & surprizes me, for I have never been able to read it thoroughly in German, & I shall assuredly do so when it appears in English.2 Has the problem of the later stages of reduction of useless structures ever perplexed you: this problem has of late caused me much perplexity. I have just written a letter to ‘Nature’ with a hypothetical explanation of this difficulty, & I will send you the paper with the passage marked.3 I will at the same time send a paper which has interested me; it need not be returned. It contains a singular statement bearing on so-called spontaneous generation.4 I much wish that this latter question could be settled; but I see no prospect of it. If it could be proved true this would be a most important to us. A good evolutionist in America, viz: E. Morse has lately published in the Proc. of the Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. a remarkable paper on the the Brachiopoda; & he seems to me to make out pretty clearly that they must be classed actually with Annelids.5 As for myself I have been working for many months on plants, viz:—on physiological points. Whenever I publish I will of course send you my little book.6
Wishing you every success in your admirable labours, I remain | My dear Häckel | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Di Gregorio, Mario A. 2005. From here to eternity: Ernst Haeckel and scientific faith. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Haeckel, Ernst. 1873. Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte. Gemeinverständliche wissenschaftliche Vorträge über die Entwickelungslehre im Allgemeinen und diejenige von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck im Besonderen. 4th edition. Berlin: Georg Reimer.
Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.
Lester, Joseph. 1995. E. Ray Lankester and the making of modern British biology. Edited and with additional material by Peter J. Bowler. Oxford: British Society for the History of Science.
Morse, Edward Sylvester. 1873. On the systematic position of the Brachiopoda. Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History 15: 315–72.
Summary
Comments on EH’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte [4th ed.].
Has written paper on rudimentary structures ["Complemental males of certain cirripedes", (1873) Collected papers 2: 177–82].
Edward Morse thinks brachiopods should be classed with annelids ["The systematic position of the Brachiopoda", Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 15 (1873): 315–73].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9068
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Ernst Philipp August (Ernst) Haeckel
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Ernst-Haeckel-Haus (Bestand A-Abt. 1: 1-52/30 [9883])
- Physical description
- LS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9068,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9068.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21