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To E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung   27 March [1867]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

Mar 27.

Dear Sir

I write a line merely to thank you for your letter & to say that I do not care which photograph is engraved.2 As soon as I hear from you that you are going to write to Mr Murray about the wood cuts I will write myself, & that will produce a better effect than my writing some time before.3

Dear Sir | yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

PS When next you write to Prof. Carus, please tell him that I hope in a few weeks to get for him specimens of Eozoon Canadense.4

Footnotes

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 22 March 1867 (Correspondence vol. 15).
2
In his letter of 22 March 1867, Christian Friedrich Schweizerbart had asked whether CD had any preferences about which photograph of him was reproduced in the German translation of Origin 4th ed. (Bronn and Carus trans. 1867).
3
Schweizerbart wanted John Murray to provide stereotypes of the woodcuts in Variation.
4
See Correspondence vol. 15, letter from J. V. Carus, 11 February 1867, and letter to J. V. Carus, 17 February [1867]. Julius Victor Carus was CD’s German translator. In 1864, John William Dawson identified samples taken from pre-Silurian strata in eastern Canada as fossilised Foraminifera, single-celled protists with shells; he named the species Eozoon canadense, the ‘Dawn animal from Canada’ (Dawson 1864). Further samples were sent to William Benjamin Carpenter, an expert on Foraminifera, who confirmed Dawson’s interpretation (Carpenter 1864a). CD added information on the discovery of Eozoon canadense to Origin 4th ed., p. 371, as substantiating his claim, made in Origin, p. 307, that life existed before the Silurian period. The interpretation of the samples as pre-Silurian fossils remained controversial, however (see, for example, Carpenter 1866, and King and Rowney 1866); and by the end of the century, comparisons with similar, more recent, formations indicated that the samples were mineral in origin (see Schopf 2000).

Bibliography

Bronn, Heinrich Georg and Carus, Julius Victor, trans. 1867. Über die Entstehung der Arten durch natürliche Zuchtwahl oder die Erhaltung der begünstigten Rassen im Kampfe um’s Dasein. 3d edition. Translated by Heinrich Georg Bronn. Revised and corrected from Origin 4th ed. by Julius Victor Carus. Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagshandlung und Druckerei.

Carpenter, William Benjamin. 1864a. Additional note on the structure and affinities of Eozoön Canadense. [Read 23 November 1864.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 21 (1865): 59–66.

Carpenter, William Benjamin. 1866. Supplemental notes on the structure and affinities of Eozoon Canadense. [Read 10 January 1866.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 22: 219–28.

Dawson, John William. 1864. On the structure of certain organic remains in the Laurentian limestones of Canada. [Read 23 November 1864.] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 21 (1865): 51–9.

King, William and Rowney, Thomas Henry. 1866. On the so-called ‘Eozoonal Rock’. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 22: 185–218.

Origin 4th ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 4th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1866.

Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.

Schopf, J. William. 2000. Solution to Darwin’s dilemma: discovery of the missing Precambrian record of life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97: 6947–53.

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Summary

Does not care which photograph is engraved. Hopes to get specimens of Eozoon canadense for J. V. Carus.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-5461F
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Jeremy Norman (dealer) (catalogue 69, item 14)
Physical description
LS(A) LS(A) 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5461F,” accessed on 16 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5461F.xml

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