skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To John Innes   [after 16 February 1857]1

[Down]

Wednesday

Dear Innes

I strongly recommend you to read enclosed beginning at p. 38 to 91.—2 Von Siebold is about the most careful & profound naturalist in Europe.3 I have found in this Book some facts, such as I was enquiring from you in regard to Bees.—4

Ever yours | C. Darwin

Footnotes

1
Dated from the reference to Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold’s work on parthenogenesis (Siebold 1856), an English translation of which (Siebold 1857) was published between 31 January and 16 February 1857 (Publishers’ Circular, 16 February 1857, p. 94). CD’s copy of Siebold 1857 is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
2
The page numbers refer to the chapter in Siebold 1857 entitled ‘True parthenogenesis in the honey bee’.
3
Siebold had been appointed Ordinarius professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Munich in 1853. He was noted for his detailed microscopical researches on invertebrates.
4
CD cited Siebold 1857 in his discussion of the two varieties of the common hive-bee in Natural selection, p. 372 n. 5.

Bibliography

Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.

Siebold, Karl Theodor Ernst von. 1856. Wahre Parthenogenesis bei Schmetterlingen und Bienen. Ein Beitrag zur Fortpflanzungsgeschichte der Thiere. Leipzig. [Vols. 7,8]

Siebold, Karl Theodor Ernst von. 1857. On a true parthenogenesis in moths and bees; a contribution to the history of reproduction in animals. Translated by William S. Dallas. London: John van Voorst.

Summary

Recommends he read passages on bees by C. T. E. von Siebold [in On the true parthenogenesis in moths and bees (1857)].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-2025
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Brodie Innes
Sent from
unstated
Source of text
American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.149)
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2025,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2025.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge