To W. A. Leighton 25 November [1844?–6]1
Down near Bromley | Kent
Nov 25th.
My dear Sir
I trouble you with a line to thank you for the trouble you have kindly taken in procuring me cuttings of the weeping yew, which my Father’s gardener will take great care of & I hope in future years to have a fine tree to remind me of Shropshire.—2 I have often thought of that curious case of the Heath in the stone-quarry & the more I think, the greater the pity appears, that it shd not be well made out & published.— Have you ever written about it?3 do you know the owner sufficiently well to ask for a cutting,— I ask this, because near here Miss Traill of Hayes Place lives whose Gardener (Mr Hunt) is famous for winning prizes at the Hort. Soc. for Heaths; & I am sure Miss Traill, wd have any cutting, which I forwarded to her, taken care of.—4 And if the Heath flowered I could send specimens to you to describe & publish.—
If you do know the individual & if you like to make this request, you had better ask the person to put a bit of clay to the end of the cutting, & send it direct in a letter to me, & I wd not lose a day in forwarding it to Hayes Place.—5 Pray do not think a moment more about this, if your relation to the individual shd make it appear to you a liberty.
Believe me | yours vy faithfully | C. Darwin
P.S. It wd be necessary of course to know whether the Heath has hitherto lived out of doors through the winters
Footnotes
Summary
Thanks for procuring cuttings of weeping yew.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-653F
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- William Allport Leighton
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Fraser’s Autographs (dealer) (May 2013)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 653F,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-653F.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18 (Supplement) and 24 (Supplement)