To Richard Owen 25 August [1841–2]1
12 Upper Gower St
Aug 25th—.
My dear Owen
I remember showing you some time ago the accompanying old tooth of Elephant from African coast & I have some faint recollection, that you said you would like to have it from its state of decay.— if not please throw it away.
I saw some weeks since at Mr. Shillinglaw’s2 at the Geographical Soc. a piece of a tusk of a Mastodon or Elephant, from Upper Peru.— Does not Cuvier enter into long discussion on a piece of tusk brought by Humboldt from S. America, doubting whether it belonged to an elephant—3 Would this be worth your looking at for that end.—4
Your’s very truly | C. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Cuvier, Georges. 1806. Sur les éléphans vivans et fossiles. Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle 8: 1–58, 93–155, 249–69.
Cuvier, Georges. 1821–4. Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, où l’on rétablit les caractères de plusiers animaux dont les révolutions du globe ont détruit les espèces. New ed. 5 vols. in 6. Paris.
Mill, Hugh Robert. 1930. The record of the Royal Geographical Society 1830–1930. London: Royal Geographical Society.
Owen, Richard. 1840–5. Odontography; or, a treatise on the comparative anatomy of the teeth; their physiological relations, mode of development, and microscopic structure, in the vertebrate animals. 2 vols. London. [Vols. 3,8]
Summary
Sends elephant tooth from Africa. Suggests it may be interesting in light of his [mistaken] memory of Cuvier’s opinion about tusk brought from Peru by Humboldt.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-608
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Richard Owen
- Sent from
- London, Upper Gower St, 12
- Source of text
- Natural History Museum, Library and Archives (General Special Collections Owen correspondence 9/207)
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 608,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-608.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 2
