From J. S. Henslow 2 November 1840
Hitcham
2 Novr 1840
My dear Darwin,
I was very glad to see your handwriting & trust you are steadily progressing— The only doubt that crosses my mind, is the possibility of Sir. G. Wilkinson1 having been cheated by the Arabs— A case is on record of a quantity of wheat taken from a Catacomb in Egypt having been eaten by modern rats, which shows it had kept well, as far as the flavor is concerned— There is a picture in Trinity of a man with a bulb of a Scilla in his hand, which he has just taken from a mummy, & the scilla is sprouting — 2 I certain nothing impossible in Mr Tupper’s statement,3 but it is precisely one of those cases which need more than one experiment to authenticate the fact— I have no doubt whatever that the seeds grew, but I think it not impossible that Sir. G. W. may have been deceived—4 If I knew Sir G. W’s address I would write to him & beg a few grains— Whewell has been here for a week lately— Col. LeCouteur5 came to talk about the Wheat-Museum of the Agricl. Socy. 6 —& I have had my annual display of fireworks—so that my time has been completely occupied— Next week I go to Cambridge to vote for Ld Lyddleton,7 & if
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Henslow, John Stevens. 1860. On the supposed germination of mummy wheat. Report of the 30th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Oxford, Transactions of the sections, pp. 110–11.
Le Couteur, John. 1836. On the varieties, properties, and classification of wheat. London: Shearsmith.
Notebook M. See Barrett 1980; Gruber and Barrett 1974; Theoretical notebooks.
Romilly, Joseph. 1967. Romilly’s Cambridge diary 1832–42. Selected passages from the diary of the Reverend Joseph Romilly, fellow of Trinity College and registrary of the University of Cambridge. Chosen, introduced and annotated by J. P. T. Bury. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Summary
Would like further experimentation to confirm report about germination of wheat from Egyptian tombs. Sir G. Wilkinson may have been deceived by the Arabs.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-579
- From
- John Stevens Henslow
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Hitcham
- Source of text
- DAR 205.2: 236
- Physical description
- inc †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 579,” accessed on 16 August 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-579.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 2