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Darwin Correspondence Project

For the curious...

A series of short pieces introducing letters on aspects of Darwin's life and research.


Darwin's illness

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 pain how cold & indifferent I must appear to my few old friends … but I … know that the inner part of my mind remains the same with my old affections."

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Drosera rotundifolia
Drosera rotundifolia

Plant or animal? (Or: Don't try this at home!)

Darwin is famous for showing that humans are just another animal, but, in his later years in particular, his real passion was something even more ambitious: to show that there are no hard-and-fast boundaries between animals and plants.

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