skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

To David Thomas Ansted   27 October [1860]1

15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne,

Oct. 27.

My dear Ansted,

As I am away from home in consequence of my daughter’s health, I do not know your address, and fly this at random, and it is of very little consequence if it never reaches you.2

I have just been reading the greater part of your ‘Geological Gossip,’ and have found part very interesting; but I want to express my admiration at the clear and correct manner in which you have given a sketch of natural selection.3 You will think this very slight praise; but I declare that the majority of readers seem utterly incapable of comprehending my long argument. Some of the reviewers, who have servilely stuck to my illustrations and almost to my words, have been correct, but extraordinarily few others have succeeded. I can see plainly, by your new illustrations and manner and order of putting the case, that you thoroughly comprehend the subject. I assure you this is most gratifying to me, and it is the sole way in which the public can be indoctrinated. I am often in despair in making the generality of naturalists even comprehend me. Intelligent men who are not naturalists and have not a bigoted idea of the term species, show more clearness of mind. I think that you have done the subject a real service, and I sincerely thank you. No doubt there will be much error found in my book, but I have great confidence that the main view will be, in time, found correct; for I find, without exception, that those naturalists who went at first one inch with me now go a foot or yard with me.

This note obviously requires no answer.

Pray believe me, | Yours sincerely, | C. Darwin.

Footnotes

Dated by the reference to Ansted 1860.
Ansted was lecturer on geology at the East India Company’s military college in Addiscombe, Surrey.
In his popular textbook on geology, Ansted discussed CD’s concept of natural selection: in a long chapter entitled ‘The battle of life’, he gave an account of how, over long periods of geological history, natural selection could engender change from one species to another (Ansted 1860, pp. 155–80).

Bibliography

Ansted, David Thomas. 1860. Geological gossip: or, stray chapters on earth and ocean. London.

Summary

Comments on interpretation of natural selection in DTA’s Geological gossip [1860].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-2966
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
David Thomas Ansted
Sent from
Eastbourne
Source of text
DAR 143
Physical description
C 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2966,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2966.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8

letter