From Raphael Meldola 1 November 1878
Offices, | 50, Old Broad Street. | E.C. | Atlas Works, | Hackney Wick, | London, N.E.
Nov. 1st. 1878
My dear Sir,
I am extremely grateful for your kindness in consenting to write a few prefatory remarks to the English edition of Weismanns essays.1 There is no occasion to put yourself to any inconvenience in the matter as under any circumstances we should not be ready for the preface for many months & you can take your leisure, over it. I have not yet obtained the author’s consent but have written to him & am awaiting his reply. I propose to bring out the book by subscription— armed with a good subscription list & your kind offer to give a short preface I can treat with a publisher on any terms that he may propose— if the subscription list is not sufficient to cover expenses of publication & the publisher will not take the balance of risk I will do so myself.
Of course I cannot promise that the translating & editing of this book will proceed with great rapidity as I have only my spare time (the evenings after 6) to work at it. I must tell you that professionally I am scientific chemist to the above works.2 Entomology has only been a pastime with me.
I will wait till you come to London to avail myself of the privilege of seeing you. If you will kindly let me know when you arrive & where you put up, a time most convenient to you for our meeting can be fixed upon. I am extremely sorry to hear that your health is still doubtful—3 I had been given to understand that you were better. I can however fully sympathise with you as I am myself subject to dyspepsia & the least overexcitement is sure to bring on an attack.
Thanking you most warmly for your kind wishes & encouragement, | I am, dear Sir, | Yours very faithfully, | R. Meldola.
C. Darwin Esqre. LLD. &c
Footnotes
Bibliography
Allen, William B. 1872. A history of Kentucky, embracing gleanings, reminiscences, antiquities, natural curiosities, statistics, and biographical sketches of pioneers, soldiers, jurists, lawyers, statesmen, divines, mechanics, farmers, merchants, and other leading men, of all occupations and pursuits. Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert.
Churchill, Frederick B. 2015. August Weismann: development, heredity, and evolution. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.
Weismann, August. 1880–2. Studies in the theory of descent. Translated by Raphael Meldola. 3 parts. Part I (1880): On the seasonal dimorphism of butterflies. Part II (1881): The origin of the markings of caterpillars. On phyletic parallelism in metamorphic species. Part III (1882): The transformation of the Mexican axolotl into amblystoma. On the mechanical conception of nature. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.
Weismann, August. 1882. Studies in the theory of descent. Translated by Raphael Meldola. 2 vols. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington.
Summary
Thanks for agreeing to write the preface for RM’s translation of Weismann.
Will arrange to meet CD when he comes to London.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11733
- From
- Raphael Meldola
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Atlas Works, Hackney
- Source of text
- DAR 171: 131
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11733,” accessed on 30 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11733.xml
