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From H. N. Moseley   9 October 1881

University of London, | Burlington Gardens. W.

Sunday. Oct 9. 81

Dear Mr Darwin

I hope you will excuse my troubling you with another letter especially as I fear the last I wrote which was very hurried was scarcely presentable.1

On p 238 of your book which I have just read through with the greatest delight, you refer casually to “Meteoric Dust”.2 You may perhaps care to glance over the first article in the enclosed “Naturforscher” on this subject which is written to prove that the dust in question need not be of meteoric origin at all but on the other hand is as far as can yet be made out always nearly related in its mineral consituents to the rocks of the district where it occurs.3

I have never believed in the cosmic dust which Murray of the Challenger believes he has found in deep sea mud.4 The matter is one of so great interest that I thought you might like to read what von Lasaulx has to say about it.

Will you kindly send me back leaflet as I bind the Naturforscher.

Yours truly | H. N. Moseley.

There is a misprint on p. 134 at bottom 1.9 of an inch for .195

Footnotes

2
In Earthworms, p. 238, CD had noted that, based on observations in Arctic snow fields, meteoric dust was continually falling.
3
The enclosure, a copy of the weekly publication Der Naturforscher. Wochenblatt zur Verbreitung der Fortschritte in den Naturwissenschaften (The Naturalist. Weekly Paper for the Dissemination of Advances in Natural Sciences), has not been found, but was evidently the issue for 11 June 1881 (ibid., 14 (1881): 225–32). This issue contained an article, ‘Ueber den Ursprung des atmosphärischen Stauben’ (ibid., pp. 225–6), which summarised a paper by Arnold von Lasaulx, ‘Ueber sogenannten kosmischen Staub’ (On so-called cosmic dust; Lasaulx 1880).
4
John Murray (1841–1914) had been the naturalist to the Challenger expedition (ODNB). In his paper ‘On the distribution of volcanic debris over the floor of the ocean’ (Murray 1878, p. 261), Murray had concluded that minute spherules of iron and other magnetic particles probably had a cosmic origin.
5
The error in Earthworms, p. 134, was noted in an errata slip added to the third printing, but the correction was itself in error; the error was corrected in the text of the fourth printing (Freeman 1977).

Bibliography

Earthworms: The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms: with observations on their habits. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1881.

Freeman, Richard Broke. 1977. The works of Charles Darwin: an annotated bibliographical handlist. 2d edition. Folkestone, Kent: William Dawson & Sons. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, Shoe String Press.

Lasaulx, Arnold von. 1880. Ueber sogenannten kosmischen Staub. Mineralogische und petrographische Mitteilungen 3 (1880–1): 517–32.

Murray, John. 1878. On the distribution of volcanic debris over the floor of the ocean,—its character, source, and some of the products of its disintegration and decomposition. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 9: 247–61.

ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Summary

Sends a paper by Arnold von Lasaulx ["Ueber sogenannten kosmischen Staub", Mineralogische und petrographische Mitteilungen 3 (1880–1): 517–32. HNM does not believe in meteoric dust, which CD takes for granted in Earthworms.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13384
From
Henry Nottidge Moseley
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
University of London, Burlington Gardens
Source of text
DAR 171: 261
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13384,” accessed on 16 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13384.xml

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