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From E. A. Darwin   20 May [1880]1

May 20

Dear Charles—

Thanks for the two pamphlets. That by Zöckler is I think entirely worthless   Just got up for a lecture out of you & Krause.2 Being Prof of Theology he winds up by saying that he does not enter into the question whether your theories are true—or only castles in the air & a Fata Morgana.3 Poor Price must have a bad time coming & I will do what you suggest.4

Yours affec | EAD

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the publication date of Otto Zöckler’s pamphlet (see n. 2, below).
2
Otto Zöckler had published a pamphlet on Erasmus Darwin as a forerunner of Darwinism (Zöckler 1880); he evidently drew on Erasmus Darwin, which contained a translation of Ernst Krause’s essay on Erasmus Darwin, and CD’s biography of his grandfather. The second pamphlet was possibly the review of Erasmus Darwin that was published in Revue scientifique de la France et de l'étranger on 15 May 1880 (Ferrari 1880).
3
‘Fata Morgana’: a mirage, due to a thermal inversion, that makes distant objects, such as ships, appear to be floating in the sky.
4
Possibly John Price, who was friends with both CD and Erasmus Alvey Darwin. A year later, in September 1881, CD wrote that he hoped that Price was suffering ‘less than formerly’ (Correspondence vol. 29, letter to John Price, 3 September [1881]).

Bibliography

Erasmus Darwin. By Ernst Krause. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas, with a preliminary notice by Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1879.

Ferrari, Henri. 1880. Érasme Darwin. [Review of Erasmus Darwin.] Revue scientifique de la France et de l’étranger 2d ser. 9: 1090–4.

Zöckler, Otto. 1880. Darwin’s Großvater als Arzt, Dichter und Naturphilosoph. Ein Beitrag zur Vorgeschichte des Darwinismus. In Sammlung von Vorträgen für das deutsche Volk, edited by Wilhelm Frommel and Friedrich Pfaff, vol. 3. Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung.

Summary

Thanks for two pamphlets;

Otto Zöckler’s [Darwin’s Grossvater (1880)] he thinks worthless.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12611
From
Erasmus Alvey Darwin
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
unstated
Source of text
DAR 105: B112
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12611,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12611.xml

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Darwin Correspondence Project
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