To G. H. Darwin 27 November [1874]
Summary
CD thinks better of "cousin paper" than GHD does.
With respect to GHD’s "viscous work", remembers endless discussions of movement of viscous matter 20 years back, apropos of movement of glaciers.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | George Howard Darwin |
| Date: | 27 Nov [1874] |
| Classmark: | DAR 210.1: 40 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9735 |
To Alfred Newton 14 March 1874
Summary
Can give no definite information. Believes severe winters are by far the most important check on numbers of birds; the destruction of eggs is of subordinate importance.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Alfred Newton |
| Date: | 14 Mar 1874 |
| Classmark: | Cambridge University Library (MS Add. 9839/1D/62) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9359 |
Matches: 3 hits
- … St John 1849 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 738). See letter from Alfred …
- … letter from Alfred Newton, 13 March 1874 and n. 8. Up to 80,000 guillemot eggs a week were collected in early summer on the Faroe Islands, for example (see Williamson 1970 , p. 146). CD refers to Charles St John and St John 1849 , …
- … 1849 p 178–179 you will find some particulars (if not already known to you) of the recent increase of certain birds, by the destruction of vermin. (Misseltoe Thrushes compete in my garden with thrushes & blackbirds for yew-berries) The famous horticulturist Rivers, now an old man, & whose father & grandfather have kept the same garden, told me that birds have increased greatly, so that he is now obliged to protect almost every thing by nets, which was not the case in his father’s time. I fear this letter …
From Alfred Newton 15 March 1874
Summary
Thanks CD for his opinion on egging. Despite the intensity of the practice sufficient eggs always remain to carry on the breed.
| Author: | Alfred Newton |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 15 Mar 1874 |
| Classmark: | DAR 172: 51 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9364 |
To John Phillips 31 March [1874]
Summary
Regrets he cannot visit Oxford.
Comments on sketches in letter from JP [9360].
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | John Phillips |
| Date: | 31 Mar [1874] |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.439) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9379 |
To G. J. Romanes 16 December 1874
Summary
Thanks GJR for copy of his book [Christian prayer and general laws (1874)].
Discusses breeding and sterility.
Discusses experiments to test Pangenesis. Cites useful references.
Suggests GJR visit Kew gardens.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | George John Romanes |
| Date: | 16 Dec 1874 |
| Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.455) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9762 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … letter from T. H. Farrer, 12 August 1873 ). Variation of animals and plants under domestication ( Variation ). In Variation 1: 395, CD cited Gärtner 1849 , …
- … 1849 , pp. 620–1, where they are described in an extensive quotation, but since the footnotes are muddled it is not clear where the quotation is from. Romanes was interested in testing CD’s theory of pangenesis (see Variation 2: 357–404) by producing graft hybrids ( letter …
From W. E. Darwin [before 18 June 1874]
Summary
Sends references on Utricularia and Pinguicula.
| Author: | William Erasmus Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | [before 18 June 1874] |
| Classmark: | DAR 58.1: 137; Christ’s College Library, Cambridge (MS 53 Fox 154) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9201 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter beginning ‘ Pinguicula lusitanica ’. Pinguicula lusitanica is the pale butterwort. Francis Darwin . The quotation is from William Arnold Bromfield’s flora of the Isle of Wight ( Bromfield 1856 , p. 395). William Higgins Coleman was co-author of a flora of Hertfordshire (Webb and Coleman 1849). …
From G. H. Darwin 18 April 1874
Summary
Sends queries [on proofs of Descent, 2d ed.]. Will be finished, except for the index, in two days.
Is now less satisfied than formerly with his statistics on cousin marriage.
[Enclosure is a copy by GHD of J. S. Mill’s statement about Origin (Logic 2: 18 n.).]
| Author: | George Howard Darwin |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 18 Apr 1874 |
| Classmark: | DAR 210.2: 34 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9417 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1849 and published by Oxford University Press. Francis Darwin was engaged to Amy Ruck . The other members of the Ruck family were Lawrence and Mary Anne Ruck and their children, Arthur Ashley, Laurence Ithel, Oliver Edwal, and Richard Matthews , and a married sister, Mary Elizabeth Atkin . The ‘fiend’ was Laurence Ithel Ruck (see letter …
To Fritz Müller 1 January 1874
Summary
Thanks for two pamphlets.
Sends Thomas Belt’s [The naturalist in Nicaragua (1874)], "the best Nat. Hist. book of travels ever published".
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Müller |
| Date: | 1 Jan 1874 |
| Classmark: | The British Library (Loan MS 10 no 36) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-9223 |
Matches: 1 hit
| letter | (8) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (5) |
| Darwin, G. H. | (1) |
| Darwin, W. E. | (1) |
| Newton, Alfred | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (3) |
| Darwin, G. H. | (1) |
| Müller, Fritz | (1) |
| Newton, Alfred | (1) |
| Phillips, John | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (8) |
| Darwin, G. H. | (2) |
| Newton, Alfred | (2) |
| Darwin, W. E. | (1) |
| Müller, Fritz | (1) |
Darwin's health
Summary
On 28 March 1849, ten years before Origin was published, Darwin wrote to his good friend Joseph Hooker from Great Malvern in Worcestershire, where Dr James Manby Gully ran a fashionable water-cure establishment. Darwin apologised for his delayed reply to…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On 28 March 1849, ten years before Origin was published, Darwin wrote to his good friend …
Darwin in letters, 1847-1850: Microscopes and barnacles
Summary
Darwin's study of barnacles, begun in 1844, took him eight years to complete. The correspondence reveals how his interest in a species found during the Beagle voyage developed into an investigation of the comparative anatomy of other cirripedes and…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Species theory In November 1845, Charles Darwin wrote to his friend and confidant Joseph …
1.3 Thomas Herbert Maguire, lithograph
Summary
< Back to Introduction This striking portrait of Darwin, dating from 1849, belonged to a series of about sixty lithographic portraits of naturalists and other scientists drawn by Thomas Herbert Maguire. They were successively commissioned over a…
Matches: 1 hits
- … < Back to Introduction This striking portrait of Darwin, dating from 1849, belonged …
Women’s scientific participation
Summary
Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants Darwin’s correspondence helps bring to light a community of women who participated, often actively and routinely, in the nineteenth-century scientific community. Here is a…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants …
Scientific Practice
Summary
Specialism|Experiment|Microscopes|Collecting|Theory Letter writing is often seen as a part of scientific communication, rather than as integral to knowledge making. This section shows how correspondence could help to shape the practice of science, from…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Specialism | Experiment | Microscopes | Collecting | Theory Letter writing …
Species and varieties
Summary
On the origin of species by means of natural selection …so begins the title of Darwin’s most famous book, and the reader would rightly assume that such a thing as ‘species’ must therefore exist and be subject to description. But the title continues, …or…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On the origin of species by means of natural selection …so begins the title of Darwin’s most …
Darwin’s reading notebooks
Summary
In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to read in Notebook C (Notebooks, pp. 319–28). In 1839, these lists were copied and continued in separate notebooks. The first of these reading notebooks (DAR 119…
Matches: 1 hits
- … In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to …
Scientific Networks
Summary
Friendship|Mentors|Class|Gender In its broadest sense, a scientific network is a set of connections between people, places, and things that channel the communication of knowledge, and that substantially determine both its intellectual form and content,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Friendship | Mentors | Class | Gender In its broadest sense, a scientific …
Darwin's notes for his physician, 1865
Summary
On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher who had studied medicine in London and Paris in the early 1840s, visited Down to consult with Darwin about his ill health. In 1863 Chapman started to treat…
Matches: 1 hits
- … On 20 May 1865, Emma Darwin recorded in her diary that John Chapman, a prominent London publisher …
What is an experiment?
Summary
Darwin is not usually regarded as an experimenter, but rather as an astute observer and a grand theorist. His early career seems to confirm this. He began with detailed note-taking, collecting and cataloguing on the Beagle, and edited a descriptive zoology…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin is not usually regarded as an experimenter, but rather as an astute observer and a grand …
Barnacles
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment Darwin and barnacles Darwin’s interest in Cirripedia, a class of marine arthropods, was first piqued by the discovery of an odd burrowing barnacle, which he later named “Mr. Arthrobalanus," while he was…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Sources | Discussion Questions | Experiment Darwin and barnacles …
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
Summary
George Eliot was the pen name of celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She was born on the outskirts of Nuneaton in Warwickshire and was educated at boarding schools from the age of five until she was 16. Her education ended when she…
Matches: 1 hits
- … George Eliot was the pen name of the celebrated Victorian novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880). She …
John Murray
Summary
Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was published on 22 November 1859. The publisher was John Murray, who specialised in non-fiction, particularly politics, travel and science, and had published…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin's most famous book On the origin of species by means of natural selection (Origin) was …
'An Appeal' against animal cruelty
Summary
The four-page pamphlet transcribed below and entitled 'An Appeal', was composed jointly by Emma and Charles Darwin (see letter from Emma Darwin to W. D. Fox, [29 September 1863]). The pamphlet, which protested against the cruelty of steel vermin…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The four-page pamphlet transcribed below and entitled 'An Appeal', was composed jointly by Emma …
Dramatisation script
Summary
Re: Design – Adaptation of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Asa Gray and others… by Craig Baxter – as performed 25 March 2007
Matches: 1 hits
- … Re: Design – performance version – 25 March 2007 – 1 Re: Design – Adaptation of the …
Darwin's illness
Summary
Was Darwin an invalid? In many photographs he looks wearied by age, wrapped in a great coat to protect him from cold. In a letter to his cousin William Fox, he wrote: "Long and continued ill health has much changed me, & I very often think with…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Was Darwin an invalid? In many photographs he looks wearied by age, wrapped in a great coat to …
Fritz Müller
Summary
Fritz Müller, a German who spent most of his life in political exile in Brazil, described Darwin as his second father, and Darwin's son, Francis, wrote that, although they never met 'the correspondence with Müller, which continued to the close of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Francis Darwin, in Life and letters of Charles Darwin , wrote of Fritz Müller They …
Living and fossil cirripedia
Summary
Darwin published four volumes on barnacles, the crustacean sub-class Cirripedia, between 1851 and 1854, two on living species and two on fossil species. Written for a specialist audience, they are among the most challenging and least read of Darwin’s works…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin published four volumes on the crustacean sub-class Cirripedia between 1851 and 1854, two on …
Bibliography of Darwin’s geological publications
Summary
This list includes papers read by Darwin to the Geological Society of London, his books on the geology of the Beagle voyage, and other publications on geological topics. Author-date citations refer to entries in the Darwin Correspondence Project’s…
Matches: 1 hits
- … This list includes papers read by Darwin to the Geological Society of London, his books on the …
Darwin and Design
Summary
At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religion and the sciences were generally thought to be in harmony. The study of God’s word in the Bible, and of his works in nature, were considered to be part of the same truth. One version of this…
Matches: 1 hits
- … At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religion and the sciences were generally …
