From Francis Darwin to Emma Darwin [after 16 October 1868]1
Union Society, Cambridge
Dear Mama
This letter is going to be chiefly devoted to beetles & business Will you Please send my tennis shoes they are in the cupboard in my room, (not the spiked shoes) also I should very much like the bottle of beetles that I left on the side board. You will be pleased to hear that the Marquis of Salisbury is going to take Holwood next winter probably in January for 6 Months
Cecil went down there to look at it & liked it very much2 I had a long work with Crotch to day at stridulation,3 & we are going to send a box of preparations to papa; from what we can make out the sexual theory seems very shaky4 we have found a new long horn which is like Prionus in having no stridular5 but it is very distinct from it in other respects
We are still puzzled by Cychrus as the groove in the outer edge of the elytra where Crotch thought it was seems very vaguely rasped.6 He will send the sexes of two kinds of Curculionidæ, (one the Canary one).7 There is a new form of rasp in Clytus & the Lepturidæ two ridges instead of one,8 but they are in usual place on the meso thorax; also a very curious water beetle with a rasp on the elytra,9 and a beautiful Longicorn with a rasp so fine as to appear prismatic.10 all these are on card
Yr affec son | F Darwin
I hope you are better now— I have let this set on into the back of its neck to tell you I will write a less beetley letter soon
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Summary
Has been working with G. R. Crotch on stridulation. The sexual theory seems very shaky.
Is sending preparations of beetles.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5761
- From
- Francis Darwin
- To
- Emma Wedgwood/Emma Darwin
- Sent from
- Union Society, Cambridge
- Source of text
- DAR 82: A96–7
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp † (by CD)
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5761,” accessed on 1 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5761.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16