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Darwin Correspondence Project

To J. W. Judd   27 June 1878

Down. | Beckenham Kent.

June 27th. 1878.

My dear Sir.

I am heartily glad to hear of your intended marriage—1 A good wife is the supreme blessing in this life, & I hope & believe from what you say, that you will be as happy as I have been in this respect— May your future geological work be as valuable as that which you have already done; & more than this need not be wished for any man; the practical teaching of Geology seems an excellent idea.2

Many thanks for Neumayr; but I have already received & read a copy of the same, or at least of a very similar essay—& admirably good it seemed to me—3

This essay and one by Mojsisovics which I have lately read, show what Palæontology in the future will do for the classification & sequence of Formations—4 It delighted me to see so inverted an order of proceeding,—viz the assuming the descent of species as certain & then taking the changes of closely allied forms as the standard of geological time— My health is better than it was a few years ago, but I never pass a day without much discomfort and the sense of extreme fatigue.

With all good wishes. | Yours very sincerely— | Ch. Darwin.

Footnotes

Neumayr 1878; see letter from J. W. Judd, 26 June 1878 and n. 1. In 1877, CD had read Melchior Neumayr’s work, written with Carl Paul, on the Congeria and Paludina strata (Neumayr and Paul 1875); see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to Melchior Neumayr, 9 March 1877.
A lightly annotated copy of Edmund Mojsisovics von Mojsvár’s paper ‘Kleine Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Anneliden. I. Die Lumbricidenhypodermis’ (Small contributions to the knowledge of the annelids. I. The hypodermis of lumbricids; Mojsisovics 1878) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. Both Mojsisovics and Neumayr took CD’s theory of descent as established and determined geological age by fossil evidence rather than by the characteristics of rocks; see also letter to Edmund Mojsisovics von Mojsvár, 1 June 1878, and letter from Edmund Mojsisovics von Mojsvár, 6 June 1878.

Bibliography

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

Neumayr, Melchior. 1878. Ueber unvermittelt auftretende Cephalopodentypen im Jura Mittel-Europa’s. Jahrbuch der kaiserlich-königlichen geologischen Reichsanstalt 28: 37–80.

Summary

Congratulates JWJ on marriage.

Thanks for essay by Neumayr [see 11569].

Comments on paper by Edmund Mojsisovics ["Kleine Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Anneliden", Sitzungsber. K. Akad. Wiss. Wien Math.-naturwiss. Cl. 76 (1877) Abt. 1: 7–20].

CD’s health better than a few years ago.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11572
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Wesley Judd
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 146: 8
Physical description
C 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11572,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11572.xml

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