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To T. H. Huxley   20 June [1870]1

Down | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

June 20

My dear Huxley

You were so kind as to say that you would lend me Ecker Icones Phy. (Part with Pl 30) & Bischoff Hund-eies (Part with Pl. 41) to get the embryos copied for engraving—2 I shd. keep the books only for a week.— Will you have kindness to send them by parcel Delivery Coy, to 6 Queen Anne St Cavendish Sqe. to be there on Thursday 23d, when we come to London for a week—3

If I do not hear to the contrary, I hope you will let me pay you my early Sunday call on the 26th—

I will caution Mr Ford to be very careful with your Books.—4

Ever yours | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the form of the address, with ‘Bromley’ crossed out and ‘Beckenham’ inserted by hand, a form that CD used between April 1869 and May 1871, and by the reference to a week’s visit to London in June: the Darwins were in London from Friday 24 June to Friday 1 July 1870 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
2
CD refers to Rudolph Wagner’s Icones physiologicae (R. Wagner 1851–9), edited by Alexander Ecker, and Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm Bischoff’s Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hunde-Eies (Developmental history of the dog-egg; Bischoff 1845). CD used the illustrations of human and dog embryos in Descent 1: 15; see also ibid, p. 16, n. 11, for CD’s note on these illustrations.
3
Six Queen Anne Street, London, was the address of CD’s brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin. In fact, the Darwins seem to arrived in London on the Friday (see n. 1, above).
4
George Henry Ford made many of the illustrations for Descent.

Bibliography

Bischoff, Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm. 1845. Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hunde-Eies. Brunswick: F. Vieweg und sohn.

Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.

Wagner, Rudolph. 1851–9. Icones physiologicae. Erläuterungstafeln zur Physiologie und Entwickelungsgeschichte. 2d edition, revised and edited by Alexander Ecker. Leipzig: Leopold Voss.

Summary

Asks for figures of embryos by A. Ecker and T. L. W. Bischoff to copy [for Descent, ch. 1].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-6788
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Thomas Henry Huxley
Sent from
Caerdeon Down letterhead
Source of text
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 269)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6788,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6788.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18

letter

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