Owens College, Manchester, founded in 1851, became a science-based university on the German model during the 1860s. In 1877, the college council decided to divide the chair in natural history and create separate departments of zoology and botany; the first professor of zoology, appointed in 1879, was Arthur Milnes Marshall (ODNB). CD had praised White’s paper ‘Contributions to a knowledge of the hemipterous fauna of St. Helena, and speculations on its origin’ (F. B. White 1878; see Correspondence vol. 26, letter to F. B. White, 23 September [1878]).

White sent a copy of the July 1879 issue of Scottish Naturalist; it contained the first part of his article ‘The mountain Lepidoptera of Britain: their distribution and its causes’ (F. B. White 1879). CD’s copy is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.