skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. V. Carus   25 December 1875

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Dec 25. 75

My dear Sir

I congratulate you on having finished “Insectivorous Plants”. Many thanks for the errata, which I will use for the French translation & append to the unsold copies of the English edit.1

Page 95. l. 4—“120th” is right & the mm ought to be 1.272

Page 301 footnote Spence is right3

Page 375 l 12 for “the following” read this and the following4

Herr Koch can easily get my two Geological books from the publishers Messrs Smith & Elder, London.5

I have looked through the spare copies of all my papers, and send all that I have; but I do not think that several of them are worth translating. I have only one copy of the best viz on the Erratic Boulders of S. America; but I can lend you my one copy whenever you want it. I do not send my long paper on the Parallel Roads of Glenroy, as I am sure that I was wrong, though some still uphold my view.6

All my papers on Dimorphic plants will be republished corrected in the Book at which I am now at work.7 My next work will be to bring out a new Edit of my Orchis book.8

I am heartily glad to hear that yr health is better, & long may it remain so— I can give a very fairly good account of my own health—

My dear Sir | Yrs very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

1
See letter from J. V. Carus, 21 December 1875, and letter to C.-F. Reinwald, 26 December 1875). The German edition of Insectivorous plants was Carus trans. 1876a; the French translation was Barbier trans. 1877. Carus’s corrections were not made in the English text until 1888, when Francis Darwin incorporated the corrections into Insectivorous plants 2d ed., but several were noted on an errata slip that was inserted into remaining unsold copies of the third thousand of Insectivorous plants and in all copies of the fourth thousand (see letter from J. V. Carus, 21 December 1875, nn. 3–11).
5
Eduard Koch, the head of E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, was publishing a German collected edition of CD’s works, and wanted to include translations of South America and Volcanic islands (see letter from J. V. Carus, 21 December 1875). Both these works had been published by Smith, Elder, & Company.
6
Carus wanted to translate some of CD’s geological papers for the German edition of his collected works (see letter from J. V. Carus, 21 December 1875 and n. 15). He did not include ‘Parallel roads of Glen Roy’. In this paper, CD had suggested that the parallel roads of Glen Roy were terraces produced by changing seawater levels, but he had since accepted that they were shorelines of a diminishing ice-dammed lake. In contrast, Henry Darwin Rogers, Robert Boog Watson, and James Nicol had continued to argue for a marine origin of the roads (see Rogers 1861, Watson 1866, and Nicol 1869).
8
CD finished the first draft of Cross and self fertilisation and began preparing Orchids 2d ed. in May 1876 (Correspondence vol. 24, Appendix II). He had suggested a new edition of Orchids after being unable to buy a second-hand copy of the first edition (see letter to R. F. Cooke, 23 October [1875]).

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Cross and self fertilisation: The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1876.

‘Dimorphic condition in Primula’: On the two forms, or dimorphic condition, in the species of Primula, and on their remarkable sexual relations. By Charles Darwin. [Read 21 November 1861.] Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Botany) 6 (1862): 77–96. [Collected papers 2: 45–63.]

Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.

‘Illegitimate offspring of dimorphic and trimorphic plants’: On the character and hybrid-like nature of the offspring from the illegitimate unions of dimorphic and trimorphic plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 20 February 1868.] Journal of the Linnean Society of London (Botany) 10 (1869): 393–437.

Insectivorous plants 2d ed. By Charles Darwin. Revised by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1888.

Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.

Nicol, James. 1869. On the origin of the parallel roads of Glen Roy. [Read 12 May 1869.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 25: 282–91.

Orchids 2d ed.: The various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects. By Charles Darwin. 2d edition, revised. London: John Murray. 1877.

Orchids: On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1862.

‘Parallel roads of Glen Roy’: Observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and of other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin. By Charles Darwin. [Read 7 February 1839.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 129: 39–81. [Shorter publications, pp. 50–88.]

Rogers, Henry Darwin. 1861. On the origin of the parallel roads of Lochaber (Glen Roy), Scotland. [Read 22 March 1861.] Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 3 (1858–62): 341–5.

South America: Geological observations on South America. Being the third part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. FitzRoy RN, during the years 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1846.

‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’: On the sexual relations of the three forms of Lythrum salicaria. By Charles Darwin. [Read 16 June 1864.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 8 (1865): 169–96. [Collected papers 2: 106–31.]

Volcanic islands: Geological observations on the volcanic islands, visited during the voyage of HMS Beagle, together with some brief notices on the geology of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. Being the second part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. FitzRoy RN, during the years 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1844.

Watson, Robert Boog. 1866. On the marine origin of the parallel roads of Glen Roy. (Abstract.) Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 22 (1865–6): 9–12.

Summary

Thanks for errata in Insectivorous plants.

Sends spare copies of his papers, but thinks several are not worth publishing.

Has only one copy, which he will lend JVC, of the best one, on "Erratic boulders of South America" [Collected papers 1: 145–63].

Has not sent "Parallel roads of Glen Roy" [Collected papers 1: 87–137], as he is sure he was wrong.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10323,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10323.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge