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Darwin Correspondence Project

To G. J. Romanes   23 July 1879

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

July 23d/79

My dear Romanes.

I take great interest in Grant Allen & am much grieved at what you say. I thank you for telling me about the subscription & send a cheque for 25£.1 Should more be urgently required I shall be glad to give more.— Poor fellow it is a most melancholy case.—

We were very sorry that you could not come to us before your northern migration; but we hope at some future time to see Mrs Romanes & you here.—2 I have not had a very good time of late & have been compelled to knock off work occasionally. On Augt 1st. we all go to Coniston for a month, & a nice treat it will be if the weather keeps as it is!3

I enclose paper in case you care about such cases: Mr Meehan, however, I look at as a very inaccurate observer.4 I wish you all good fortune with the Medusæ.5

Pray present my kind compliments to Mrs. Romanes & believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

1
No letter from Romanes mentioning Grant Allen has been found. Allen had been suffering from overwork and illness; Romanes and George Croom Robertson together raised £202 to send Allen and his family to the Riviera for the winter of 1879–80 (Morton 2005, p. 55). CD recorded a payment, dated 23 July 1879, of £25 under the heading ‘Romanes for subscription for Grant Allen’ in his Account books–cash account (Down House MS).
2
Romanes spent summers at his family’s home in Dunskaith, Ross-shire, where he carried out most of his research on the nervous system of medusae (the sexual form of individuals of the phylum Cnidaria; see, for example, Romanes 1876–7, a study of some species of Cnidaria native to Scotland). Romanes’s wife was Ethel Romanes.
3
The Darwins stayed at Coniston in the Lake District from 2 to 27 August 1879 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).The reference to the weather was ironic; the summer of 1879 was the wettest in England since records began in 1750 (Briffa et al. 2009, p. 1897).
4
The paper by Thomas Meehan has not been identified, but may have been Meehan’s report on his success in producing a graft-hybrid apple (Meehan 1876). On CD’s estimation of Meehan, see Correspondence vol. 26, letter to Asa Gray, 21 [and 22] January 1878.
5
See n. 2, above. Romanes’s final observations on the nervous system of medusae were summarised in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 28 (1879): 266–7, and published in full in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Romanes 1879).

Bibliography

Briffa, K. R., et al. 2009. Wet and dry summers in Europe since 1750: evidence of increasing drought. International Journal of Climatology 29: 1894–1905.

Meehan, Thomas. 1876. Graft hybrids. Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 25: 254–5.

Morton, Peter. 2005b. ‘The busiest man in England’: Grant Allen and the writing trade, 1875–1900. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Romanes, George John. 1876–7. An account of some new species, varieties, and monstrous forms of medusæ. [Read 6 April 1876 and 18 January 1877.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 12 (1876): 524–31; 13 (1878): 190–4.

Romanes, George John. 1879. Concluding observations on the locomotor system of medusae. [Read 16 January 1879.] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 171 (1880): 161–202.

Summary

Contributes to subscription for Grant Allen.

Regrets GJR and wife could not visit.

Encloses paper [not identified] by Thomas Meehan, a very inaccurate observer.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12168
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George John Romanes
Sent from
Down
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.566)
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12168,” accessed on 25 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12168.xml

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