To G. J. Romanes 24 January 1881
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Jan 24/81
My dear Romanes,
On receipt of your letter, I made enquiries & found that young pigs could be purchased for about 30/- each, on the premises where they had been born. But there is an insurmountable difficulty at present in the way of your experiment1 The owner of the pigs said he could not allow them even to cross the road without their being first examined by an inspector & then getting an order from a magistrate, & no magistrate would allow a pig at present to be turned loose as infection is about. Our immense snow-drifts would be another obstacle. So you must give up the attempt.
You had better keep the enclosed letter from Fabre as I shall never use it—2
Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Romanes, George John. 1883a. Mental evolution in animals: with a posthumous essay on instinct by Charles Darwin. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
Summary
Describes difficulty of obtaining pigs for experiment.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13024
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- George John Romanes
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.580)
- Physical description
- LS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13024,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13024.xml