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Darwin Correspondence Project

From James Williams   24 January 1882

Mining Directory Office, | Hayle,

Jany. 24th. 1882.

C. Darwin Esqre./

Sir,

I hope you will excuse the liberty, I now take, in addressing you, if I could have gained the information I required I would not have presumed to trouble you,

The information I require, is, are the three Kingdoms i.e. The Animal, the Vegetable, and the Mineral so nearly merged one in the other so as not to be able to draw the line,1

I have had for answer yes, and no, which is correct,

I have made some important discoveries in the mineral kingdom and am desirous of going further

I am, | Sir | yours most obediently | Jas. Williams

Footnotes

Carl von Linné had followed the conventional division of nature into three kingdoms in his influential Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ (Linnaeus 1758–9). Ernst Haeckel and others had proposed a new kingdom for unicellular organisms between Animalia and Plantae, the Protista (see Haeckel 1866, 1: 203–6). Some of CD’s work on plants raised questions about the animal–vegetable boundary; there were also ongoing debates about the classification of pre-Silurian forms of life, such as Eozoon canadense (see letter from T. G. Bonney, 5 February 1882, n. 4).

Bibliography

Haeckel, Ernst. 1866. Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Allgemeine Grundzüge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft, mechanisch begründet durch die von Charles Darwin reformirte Descendenz-Theorie. 2 vols. Berlin: Georg Reimer.

Linnaeus, Carolus (Carl von Linné). 1758–9. Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. 10th edition. 2 vols. Stockholm: Laurentius Salvius.

Summary

Are the animal and vegetable kingdoms so united as to be indistinguishable?

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-13643
From
James Williams
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Mining Directory Office, Hayle
Source of text
DAR 201: 42
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13643,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13643.xml

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