From G. H. K. Thwaites 16 October 1868
Peradeniya, Ceylon
16 Oct 1868
My dear Darwin,
With this I am sending to Kew for you a little specimen of a plant which I think will interest you— It’s beauty will certainly please you.1
My friend Mr Glenie will be delighted, I am sure, to hear from you.2 He tells me he has a pair of the black-boned fowls ♂ & ♀ both white & that he hopes to succeed in raising a brood of chickens from them. Mr. Layard’s specimens, I should judge from his note, were all smoke coloured.3
I have perused your new Book with the greatest possible interest, and am not aghast at your Pangenesis Theory.4 Indeed it is not at all inconsistent with my own views given in some preliminary remarks to a little paper on Diatoms published in the Ann. of Nat. Hist for March 1848.5 You, however, put the idea into a more definite shape, making quality depend upon innumerable highly organised atoms or cells. One may have an infinitessimally small quantity of a liquid containing many sorts of chrystallizable substances each of which would chrystallise under proper conditions—so why not of highly organised substances each ready to pronounce itself under favorable circumstances? I cannot see why—
Your’s always | most sincerely | G. H. K. Thwaites.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Thwaites, George Henry Kendrick. 1848. Further observations on the Diatomaceæ; with descriptions of new genera and species. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 2d ser. 1: 161–72.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
On local black-boned fowls,
CD’s new book [Variation], and Pangenesis.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6420
- From
- George Henry Kendrick Thwaites
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Peradeniya, Ceylon
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 125
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6420,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6420.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16