To J. B. Innes 10 May [1875]
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
May 10th
Dear Innes
Your case of the rabbit is a curious one; but there is something very odd about the colours of young rabbits. There are breeds, which are invariably white whilst young & then become almost black; & other breeds which are at first black & then become almost white.— Most of these were aboriginally crossed breeds, & I shd suspect that the parents of Mrs. Innes-Brodies rabbit were of crossed origin.—1
Your account of your schools has interested me much, & all the more as on Saturday Ld. Young, who as Ld. Advocate introduced your school-boards, was lunching here, & was talking much about the Scotch schools.—2 He was remarking how odd it was that the voters who taxed themselves now spent very much more in their schools than was formerly done.—3 He did not know anything about the relative advantages of Scotch & English primary schools.— I have no news whatever to tell you about the neighbourhood, as I see, if that be possible, even fewer people than formerly.— Mr Duck, you will have heard, is dead,4 & we have had to appoint a new Trustee to the Friendly Club in his place, & the Committee elected Mr. Pearson.—5 By the way here is a wonderful piece of news, Mr Fflinden has forgiven Mr Pearson, & they are reconciled.—6 I have not been very well of late & have been working too hard in correcting the proofs of another of my everlasting books viz on Insectivorous Plants—which contains hardly anything about evolution.—7
We never cease to wish you had not left us.8
Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
My wife desires me to say that the plants of your Aquilegia are doing well, but not nearly so forward as yours.9
Footnotes
Bibliography
BMD: General Register Office, England and Wales civil registration indexes. England & Wales birth index, 1837–1983. England and Wales marriage index, 1837–1983. England and Wales death index, 1837–1983. Online database. Provo, Utah: The Generations Network. 2006. www.ancestry.com.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.
LL: The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. Edited by Francis Darwin. 3 vols. London: John Murray. 1887–8.
Moore, James Richard. 1985. Darwin of Down: the evolutionist as squarson-naturalist. In The Darwinian heritage, edited by David Kohn. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press in association with Nova Pacifica (Wellington, NZ).
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Strong, John. 1909. A history of secondary education in Scotland; an account of Scottish secondary education from early times to the Education Act of 1908. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
On colour changes in rabbits. Suspects JBI’s is of impure origin.
Is correcting proof of Insectivorous plants.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9975
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Brodie Innes
- Sent from
- Down
- Postmark
- MY 10 75
- Source of text
- Cleveland Health Sciences Library (Robert M. Stecher collection)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9975,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9975.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23