skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To G. J. Romanes   7 March 1878

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

March 7. 1878

My dear Romanes,

My gardener1 says that he never sows onion seed till the middle of march, as they are apt to be injured by frost. In this case I cannot conceive that they will be ready for you by May.2 Shall I risk it & have them sown at once?

I am very glad to hear that your Essay will be published in the Fortnightly;3 I happened to be thinking about it but the other day. The Books were dispatched by Rail this morning4

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

2
Romanes had been carrying out grafting experiments on root vegetables in order to test CD’s hypothesis of pangenesis (see Correspondence vol. 23, letter from G. J. Romanes, 29 September 1875). In December 1877, CD agreed to have some onions supplied by Romanes planted in his garden (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from G. J. Romanes, 2 December 1877, and letter from Charles and Francis Darwin to G. J. Romanes, 5 December 1877).
3
CD probably refers to Romanes’s article ‘The beginning of nerves in the animal kingdom’, which was published in Fortnightly Review in October (G. J. Romanes 1878a). CD had also encouraged Romanes to have his lecture ‘The scientific evidence of organic evolution: a discourse’ (G. J. Romanes 1877c) reprinted in Fortnightly Review (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to G. J. Romanes, [1 and 2 December 1877]); however, this did not appear until 1881 (G. J. Romanes 1881).
4
The books have not been identified.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Summary

CD’s gardener says not to sow onion seeds until middle of March. Should he risk sowing them at once?

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11405
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George John Romanes
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.531)
Physical description
LS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11405,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11405.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