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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Edouard Bergson   13 October 1875

Down | Beckenham. Kent.

Oct 13— 75.

Dear Sir.

I am much obliged for your kind expressions towards me, I fully agree with what you say about the impossibility of distinguishing between animal & vegetable organisms.1 This is well shown by Häckel having formed an intermediate kingdom—2 There is therefore no difficulty in believing that some low animal was descended from some low vegetable form. But it seems to me hopeless to speculate about organisms which lived at so remote a period

As I have many letters to write I hope you will excuse my brevity.

Dear Sir. | Yours faithfully. | Ch. Darwin.

Footnotes

Ernst Haeckel’s kingdom Protista included various single-celled organisms such as rhizopods and diatoms; in his phylogenetic tree, it was depicted as the central kingdom with Plantae and Animalia on either side (see Haeckel 1866, 2: plate 1).

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.

Summary

Comments on difficulty of distinguishing between lower animal and vegetable organisms.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-10195
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Edouard Bergson
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 143: 111
Physical description
C 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10195,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10195.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

letter