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Darwin Correspondence Project

From T. H. Huxley   10 October [1862]1

My dear Darwin

‘The smallest contribution thankfully received’ from you—

You shall receive a proof in due time2

Ever | Yours truly | T H Huxley

Jermyn St Octr. 10th

I can’t find anything to talk to the working men about this year but your book— I mean to give them a commentary à la Coke upon Lyttleton.—3

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to T. H. Huxley 1863b (see n. 3, below).
The reference is apparently to CD’s notice, ‘“Auditory-sac” of Cirripedes’, which was published in the January 1863 number of the Natural History Review (see letter to Natural History Review, [before 10 October 1862]). Huxley was editor-in-chief of the Natural History Review.
The Government School of Mines in Jermyn Street, London, at which Huxley was professor of natural history, ran a popular series of lectures for artisans every winter. In 1862, Huxley’s lecture series was entitled ‘On our knowledge of the causes of the phenomena of organic nature’ (T. H. Huxley 1863b; see Bibby 1959, pp. 97–100 and Montagu ed. 1968, pp. vi–vii). The reference is to the commentary by Edward Coke (Coke 1628) on Thomas Littleton’s fifteenth-century treatise on English law (Littleton c. 1481), commonly referred to as ‘Coke upon Littleton’ (B. E. Smith 1894, D. M. Walker 1980).

Bibliography

‘“Auditory-sac” of Cirripedes’: On the so-called ‘auditory-sac’ of Cirripedes. By Charles Darwin. Natural History Review n.s. 3 (1863): 115–16. [Collected papers 2: 85–7.]

Bibby, Cyril. 1959. T. H. Huxley. Scientist, humanist and educator. London: Watts.

Coke, Edward. 1628. The first part of the institutes of the lawes of England. Or, a commentarie upon Littleton, not the name of a lawyer onely, but of the law it selfe. London.

Smith, Benjamin E. 1894. The cyclopædia of names: a pronouncing and etymological dictionary of names in geography, biography, mythology, history, ethnology, art, archæology, fiction, etc., etc., etc. London.

Walker, David M. 1980. The Oxford companion to law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Summary

Thanks for a contribution ["On the so-called ""auditory-sac"" of cirripedes", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1863): 115–16; Collected papers 2: 85–7]. Is sending a proof.

This year’s lecture to working men to be devoted to CD’s book.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-3756
From
Thomas Henry Huxley
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Jermyn St
Source of text
DAR 166.2: 295
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3756,” accessed on 3 December 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3756.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 10

letter