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To V. O. Kovalevsky   2 June [1871]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

June 2d

My dear Sir

You have been very kind about Körte; but I am sorry you ran the risk of sending it. I return it by this Post, & I hope to Heaven it may reach you safely.— I think I have found cause of absence of passage: there must have been a 2nd. Edit in 1829, for Köppen gives this date & refers to a second Part by Sydow which does not appear in the Edit of 1828.2

You must not take more trouble, but if ever you shd. come across in any Library the Edit. of 1829 pray look to p. 33, & probably you will find a short passage, which wd. be of value to me.—3

I quite agree with you about the savage brutality of the Versailles army, but on the other hand I must think that the Communists have made themselves everlastingly infamous.—4

I shall be very happy to see you in England.5 I am far from well today, so no more, except once again to thank you.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to V. O. Kovalevsky, 3 May 1871.
2
Kovalevsky had borrowed one of Heinrich Friedrich Franz Körte’s works on migratory locusts in Russia (Körte 1828) from a library in Berlin and forwarded it to CD (see letter from V. O. Kovalevsky, 28 May [1871]). Körte 1829, the book CD had requested, was not a later edition of Körte 1828, but a different work. In Köppen 1866, p. 11, Friedrich Theodor Köppen referred to the second part of Körte 1829 as the official report of the Prussian district administrator, Sydow, who has not been further identified.

Bibliography

Körte, Franz. 1828. Die Strich-, Zug- oder Wander-Heuschrecke, ihre Beschreibung, Verheerung in jetzigen und früheren Zeiten, und die Mittel zu ihrer Vertilgung. Berlin: August Rücker.

Körte, Franz Friedrich Ernst. 1829. Strich-, Zug- oder Wander-Heuschrecke vom Eie an beobachtet und beschrieben. Berlin: August Rücker.

Summary

Thanks VOK for sending F. Körte’s book [Die Streich-, Zug- oder Wander-Heuschrecke (1828)]. The passage CD wrote about [see 7735] must occur in the second edition. If VOK ever comes upon the 1829 edition, it would be of use to him.

Agrees that the Versailles army has been savagely brutal [in siege of Paris], but thinks the "Communists [Communards] have made themselves everlastingly infamous".

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-7796
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevsky (Владимир Онуфриевич Ковалевский)
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Institut Mittag-Leffler
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7796,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7796.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19

letter

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