From Charles Lyell 6 and 8 September 1838
Summary
Would like to talk over Salisbury Craigs with CD.
CL’s father enthusiastic over Journal of researches.
Comments on Élie de Beaumont’s theory of mountain elevation.
Asks about parallel lines of upheaval and depression in the Pacific.
Glad CD likes Athenaeum Club.
Comments on methods of work.
Invites CD to visit Kinnordy.
Defends BAAS: "in this country no importance is attached to any body of men who do not make occasional demonstrations of their strength in public meetings".
With respect to Glen Roy, notes existence of deposits destitute of shells.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 6 and 8 Sept 1838 |
| Classmark: | K. M. Lyell 1881 2: 43 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-425 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letters with notices of his scientific contemporaries and a sketch of the rise and growth of palæozoic geology in Britain. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Journal and remarks : Journal and remarks. 1832–1836. By Charles Darwin. Vol. 3 of Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1826 …
From J. D. Hooker [3 November 1854]
Summary
JDH’s contempt for R. I. Murchison.
There is a Cyperus species and a Pteris species endemic to hot volcanoes of Ischia. Why are there no other migrators?
| Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | [3 Nov 1854] |
| Classmark: | DAR 104: 214–15 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1629 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 , pp. 64–83. During Hooker’s visit to Down at the end of October 1854 (see n. 12, below), CD had evidently asked Hooker to consider the question of aberrant genera in relation to the number of species contained in each genus and their geographical range and to question George Bentham on the same topic (see letter …
To Robert Waring Darwin [23 October 1825]
Summary
First days in Edinburgh.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Robert Waring Darwin |
| Date: | [23 Oct 1825] |
| Classmark: | DAR 154: 68 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-16 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826–7), however, CD did not pay the library deposit and borrowed no books at all (17 February 1888, p. 7) He paid his fees for two classes ‘Practice of Physic’ and ‘Midwifery’ and attended Robert Jameson’s lectures in Geology and Zoology, which he remembered as having been ‘incredibly dull’ ( Autobiography , p. 52). The original of the letter …
From W. D. Fox 9 December [1868]
Summary
Hybrid geese.
Proportions of sexes in sheep and cattle.
Pairing habits of crows.
| Author: | William Darwin Fox |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 9 Dec [1868] |
| Classmark: | DAR 84.1: 126–7, DAR 85: B36–7 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-6455 |
From J. D. Hooker 4 December 1866
Summary
Lyell’s volume [Principles, 10th ed.] received.
"We must now keep him straight anent origin and development."
Some of Spencer’s new part is interesting but much is dull and ponderous.
Huxley’s Elementary physiology [1866].
Has finished his New Zealand manual [Handbook of New Zealand flora (1864–7)]. New Zealand flora [and past geological conditions] suggest islands were once connected.
Speculates on the total amount of living organised matter on the globe, and whether it varies.
Balfour Stewart on sunspots.
| Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 4 Dec 1866 |
| Classmark: | DAR 102: 114–17 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5294 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 ). In his essay, Malthus concluded that, although population increase was inevitably limited by the means of subsistence, it was impossible to put a definite limit on the ‘power of the earth to produce subsistence’ ( ibid. , 2: 451). On the influence of Malthus on CD, see Correspondence vol. 12, letter …
To J. V. Carus 8 October [1871]
Summary
Glad to hear of new German edition of Origin. He is revising the English edition, adding a new chapter of "Answers".
No new edition of Descent has appeared.
Would be glad to see a new translation of the Journal of researches, which he revised in 1845.
Comments on white colour of sea-birds.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Julius Victor Carus |
| Date: | 8 Oct [1871] |
| Classmark: | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Slg. Darmstaedter LC 1859: Darwin, Charles, Bl. 74–77) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-7994 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter from C. -F. Reinwald, 14 May 1873 ( Calendar no. 8911)). Carus’s own translation appeared in 1875 (Carus trans. 1875), as part of Eduard Koch’s collected edition of CD’s works. Journal of researches was first published by Henry Colburn as Journal and remarks , the third volume of Robert FitzRoy and Phillip Parker King’s Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 …
To J. D. Hooker [11 January 1844]
Summary
Queries on ratios of species to genera on southern islands. CD’s observations on distribution of Galapagos organisms, and on S. American fossils, and facts he has gathered since, lead him to conclusion that species are not immutable; "it is like confessing a murder".
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
| Date: | [11 Jan 1844] |
| Classmark: | DAR 114: 3 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-729 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter to J. S. Henslow, [ c . 26 October –] 24 November [1832]. Alcide Charles Victor Dessalines d’Orbigny published descriptions of the Cryptogamia of Patagonia and Bolivia in 1839, and the palms of Paraguay and Bolivia in 1847 ( Orbigny 1835–47 , vol. 7). The collections made by Phillip Parker King during the first surveying expeditions of the Beagle and Adventure to South America, 1826– …
From B. J. Sulivan 29 September 1881
Summary
Gives further details on his grapes.
Tells of his recent movements and state of health.
| Author: | Bartholomew James Sulivan |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 29 Sept 1881 |
| Classmark: | DAR 177: 315 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-13363 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter from B. J. Sulivan, 2 January [1880] ). Both Charles Langton and Sulivan lived in Bournemouth. Alexander Burns Usborne , who had served on the Beagle , had retired from the navy in 1868. Robert Nicholas Hamond . HMS Beagle had been commissioned for two hydrographic surveys of the coast of South America; the first from 1826 …
To John Higgins 14 May 1866
Summary
Acknowledges receipt of £262 8s. 8d.
Had not heard they had suffered so much from the cattle plague in Lincolnshire.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | John Higgins |
| Date: | 14 May 1866 |
| Classmark: | Dominic Winter Auctioneers (dealers) (10 April 2019, lot 138) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-5090G |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter has not been found. Lincolnshire had seen a sharp increase in cattle infected with cattle plague or rinderpest, a cattle disease with very high mortality rates, since the beginning of 1866 (see Stamford Mercury , 2 March 1866, p. 6). Susan Elizabeth Darwin ’s tenant at Claythorpe in Lincolnshire was Joseph Gilbert . John Higgins’s son was John Higgins ( 1826– …
To Archibald Geikie 27 December [1871]
Summary
His admiration for the papers of AG [see 8119].
Relates his recent discovery that earthworms have brought to surface no less than 161 tons of dry earth over an area of 10 acres, thus creating the conditions for significant denudation. Would welcome information about the persistence of ridges and furrows in old pasture lands ploughed centuries ago. Do they run down the slopes or transversely? Refers to [A. C.] Ramsay, [James] Croll, Elie de Beaumont, and [Henry] Johnson.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Archibald Geikie |
| Date: | 27 Dec [1871] |
| Classmark: | DAR 185: 132 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-8122F |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter to A. C. Ramsay, 3 February [1869] . Geikie mentioned the persistence of furrow marks in land that had not been ploughed for a long time as one of Léonce Elie de Beaumont’s arguments for the insignificance of the atmosphere as a cause of denudation ( Geikie 1868b , p. 171; see also Earthworms , p. 290). CD spent time in North Wales regularly between 1826 …
From Emma Wedgwood to F. E. E. Wedgwood [17 December 1836]
Summary
The Darwin family are anxious for FEEW’s and Hensleigh’s opinions of CD’s journal. EW is convinced that Henry Holland is wrong if he thinks it not worth publishing.
| Author: | Emma Wedgwood; Emma Darwin |
| Addressee: | Frances Emma Elizabeth (Fanny) Mackintosh; Frances Emma Elizabeth (Fanny) Wedgwood |
| Date: | [17 Dec 1836] |
| Classmark: | V&A / Wedgwood Collection (MS WM 233) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-328 |
From Hugo de Vries 7 November 1875
Summary
Thanks for 2d edition of Climbing plants and for CD’s recognition of HdeV’s two essays on the subject [Climbing plants, pp. v–vi, 9 n., 22, 160]. Cause of spiral growth of tendrils.
| Author: | Hugo de Vries |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 7 Nov 1875 |
| Classmark: | DAR 180: 19 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-10248 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letter from Julius Sachs to Hugo von Thiel, 1 August 1875; quoted in Pas 1970 , p. 180). Hofrath : literally ‘court counsellor’, but also an honorary title given to senior civil servants, including, in the nineteenth century, academics (for a contemporary explanation of the usage, see, for example, United States Literary Gazette , 1 May 1826, …
To Robert FitzRoy 28 October [1846]
Summary
Has read RF’s pamphlet on New Zealand [Remarks on New Zealand (1846)]. Sympathises with his difficulties as Governor.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Robert FitzRoy |
| Date: | 28 Oct [1846] |
| Classmark: | DAR 144: 120 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1014 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. Edited by Francis Darwin. 3 vols. London: John Murray. 1887–8. Mellersh, Harold Edward Leslie. 1968. FitzRoy of the Beagle. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. Narrative : Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty’s ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 …
To T. H. Huxley 2 [February 1860]
Summary
H. G. Bronn offers to superintend a German translation of Origin.
Bronn has reviewed Origin [Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie (1860), p. 112].
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Thomas Henry Huxley |
| Date: | 2 [Feb 1860] |
| Classmark: | Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 80) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2679 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 by Wilhelm Emanuel Schweizerbart in Stuttgart. It was noted for its publication of scientific works, particularly those connected with palaeontology, and published many of Bronn’s works. In 1860 the owner of the firm was Christian Friedrich Schweizerbart . CD had asked Huxley to write to Rudolf Albert von Kölliker concerning a possible German translation of Origin (see Correspondence vol. 7, letter …
To P. G. King 21 February 1854
Summary
PGK’s letter stirred memories of their old days in the Beagle.
Gives news of his work on cirripedes. Would like to examine Scalpellum papillosum of King from Patagonia if PGK’s father has a duplicate in his collection.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Philip Gidley King |
| Date: | 21 Feb 1854 |
| Classmark: | Mitchell Library, Sydney (MLMSS 3447/2 Item 1) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1554A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letters, 1792–1896. Edited by Henrietta Litchfield. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1915. King, Phillip Parker, and Broderip, William John. 1832–4. Description of the Cirrhipeda, Conchifera and Mollusca, in a collection formed by the officers of HMS Adventure and Beagle employed between the years 1826 …
From John Hutton Balfour 14 January 1862
Summary
Thanks for Primula paper [Collected papers 2: 45–63]; will examine some [Edinburgh] Botanic Garden samples in its light.
Huxley visiting Edinburgh and spoke on man’s zoological relations with monkeys [see Man’s place in nature (1863)]. JHB disagrees with his views.
| Author: | John Hutton Balfour |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 14 Jan 1862 |
| Classmark: | DAR 160.1: 31 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-3387 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … letters from T. H. Huxley, 13 January 1862 and 20 January 1862 ). See, for example, Humboldt and Bonpland 1819–29, 3: 208, Whately 1831 , pp. 119–200, Whately 1854 , and Whewell 1854 , pp. 166–90 (especially p. 189). On Richard Whately’s degenerationist views, see also Gillespie 1977 . CD became a member of the Plinian Natural History Society in 1826 …
To J. S. Henslow [c. 26 October –] 24 November [1832]
Summary
A French collector [Alcide d’Orbigny] has been at the Rio Negro and will probably have "taken the cream". CD’s luck with fossil bones, among them a large extinct armadillo-like animal. Describes some birds, toads, Crustacea, and other marine specimens. Nearly all plants flowering at Bahia Blanca were collected. Is sending two large casks of fossil bones by packet.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | John Stevens Henslow |
| Date: | [c. 26 Oct –] 24 Nov [1832] |
| Classmark: | Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Henslow letters: 14 DAR/1/1/14) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-192 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 to 1833 he travelled throughout South America, collecting specimens for the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle. He published the results in Orbigny 1835–47 . Described in Fossil Mammalia , pp. 63–73, by Richard Owen , who identified it as belonging to a distinct subgenus of Megatheroid Edentata, to which he gave the name Mylodon darwinii . The ‘late observations’ refer to English newspaper accounts of the Megatherium fossil found by Sir Woodbine Parish in 1831 ( see letter …
From W. W. Reade 18 September 1871
Summary
There is a primary law of growth and innate improvement. Natural selection is a secondary law that operates to "arrange the details". This is not Lamarckian, because will is not involved.
Thanks for Chauncey Wright’s pamphlet [Darwinism (1871)].
Amused by critics who say CD is metaphysically unsophisticated.
| Author: | William Winwood Reade |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 18 Sept 1871 |
| Classmark: | DAR 176: 49 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-7950 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 , 1: 16). Jean Baptiste Lamarck believed that an animal could enhance a feature by its own efforts and that the improvement could then be inherited by its offspring ( Lamarck 1809 , 1: 235). Wright argued that anyone who accepted evolution, or transmutation of species, without accepting natural selection was in fact subscribing to the arguments of Lamarck ( Wright 1871b , p. 5). O utinam : would that (Latin). Reade refers to the proof-sheets of his Martyrdom of man ( Reade 1872 ); see letter …
To Ernst Haeckel [after 10] August – 8 October [1864]
Summary
Can understand EH’s feelings on death of his wife.
CD was impressed by manner in which species in South America are replaced by closely allied ones, by affinity of species inhabiting islands near S. America, and by relation of living Edentata and Rodentia to extinct species. When he read Malthus On population, the idea of natural selection flashed on him.
Agrees with EH’s remarks on Kölliker ["Darwin’sche Schöpfungstheorie", Z. Wiss. Zool. 14 (1864): 174–86].
Asks EH to thank Carl Gegenbaur [for Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbelthiere (1864)].
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Ernst Philipp August (Ernst) Haeckel |
| Date: | [after 10] Aug – 8 Oct [1864] |
| Classmark: | Ernst-Haeckel-Haus (Bestand A–Abt. 1: 1–52/5) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4631 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1826 in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 562–3). CD’s principle of divergence was based on the premises that a locality can support more life if it is occupied by a diversity of life-forms, that the varying offspring of each species will strive to occupy as many and as great a diversity of niches as possible, and that natural selection will tend to favour the evolution of new, specialised varieties. He saw these processes as the origin of the branching relationships between species, genera, families, orders, and classes. CD first discussed this principle in the letter …
| letter | (85) |
| people | (12) |
| bibliography | (2) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (46) |
| Hooker, J. D. | (5) |
| Coldstream, John | (2) |
| Darwin, Emma | (2) |
| Fox, W. D. | (2) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (38) |
| Hooker, J. D. | (8) |
| Darwin, Caroline | (3) |
| FitzRoy, Robert | (3) |
| Wallace, A. R. | (3) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (83) |
| Hooker, J. D. | (13) |
| FitzRoy, Robert | (4) |
| Darwin, Caroline | (3) |
| Fox, W. D. | (3) |
| 1822 | (2) |
| 1825 | (1) |
| 1826 | (2) |
| 1827 | (1) |
| 1828 | (2) |
| 1829 | (1) |
| 1831 | (3) |
| 1832 | (1) |
| 1834 | (1) |
| 1836 | (2) |
| 1837 | (2) |
| 1838 | (1) |
| 1839 | (2) |
| 1840 | (2) |
| 1844 | (3) |
| 1845 | (3) |
| 1846 | (3) |
| 1847 | (1) |
| 1852 | (1) |
| 1854 | (2) |
| 1855 | (1) |
| 1856 | (1) |
| 1859 | (3) |
| 1860 | (5) |
| 1861 | (1) |
| 1862 | (2) |
| 1863 | (5) |
| 1864 | (3) |
| 1865 | (2) |
| 1866 | (3) |
| 1867 | (1) |
| 1868 | (3) |
| 1871 | (4) |
| 1872 | (1) |
| 1873 | (1) |
| 1874 | (1) |
| 1875 | (2) |
| 1876 | (2) |
| 1878 | (4) |
| 1880 | (1) |
| 1881 | (3) |
Darwin’s student booklist
Summary
In October 1825 Charles Darwin and his older brother, Erasmus, went to study medicine in Edinburgh, where their father, Robert Waring Darwin, had trained as a doctor in the 1780’s. Erasmus had already graduated from Cambridge and was continuing his studies…
Matches: 1 hits
- … In October 1825 Charles Darwin and his older brother, Erasmus, went to study medicine in Edinburgh …
Darwin’s reading notebooks
Summary
In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to read in Notebook C (Notebooks, pp. 319–28). In 1839, these lists were copied and continued in separate notebooks. The first of these reading notebooks (DAR 119…
Matches: 1 hits
- … In April 1838, Darwin began recording the titles of books he had read and the books he wished to …
Early Days
Summary
Sources|Discussion Questions|Experiment The young Charles Darwin From an early age, Darwin exhibited a keen interest in the natural world. His boyish fascination with naturalist pursuits deepened as he entered college and started to interact with…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Sources | Discussion Questions | Experiment The young Charles Darwin …
Books on the Beagle
Summary
The Beagle was a sort of floating library. Find out what Darwin and his shipmates read here.
Matches: 1 hits
- … ‘Considering the limited disposable space in so very small a ship, we contrived to carry more …
Darwin’s first love
Summary
Darwin’s long marriage to Emma Wedgwood is well documented, but was there an earlier romance in his life? How was his departure on the Beagle entangled with his first love? The answers are revealed in a series of flirtatious letters that Darwin was…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin’s long marriage to Emma Wedgwood is well documented, but was there an earlier romance in …
Introduction to the Satire of FitzRoy's Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle
Summary
'a humble toadyish follower…': Not all pictures of Darwin during the Beagle voyage are flattering. Published here for the first time is a complete transcript of a satirical account of the Beagle’s brief visit in 1836 to the Cocos Keeling islands…
Matches: 1 hits
- … I naturally wished to have a savant at my elbow – in the position of a humble toadyish …
Journal of researches
Summary
Within two months of the Beagle’s arrival back in England in October 1836, Darwin, although busy with distributing his specimens among specialists for description, and more interested in working on his geological research, turned his mind to the task of…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The Journal of researches , Darwin’s account of his travels round the world in H.M.S. Beagle …
Darwin in letters, 1837–1843: The London years to 'natural selection'
Summary
The seven-year period following Darwin's return to England from the Beagle voyage was one of extraordinary activity and productivity in which he became recognised as a naturalist of outstanding ability, as an author and editor, and as a professional…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The seven-year period following Darwin's return to England from the Beagle voyage was one of …
George James Stebbing
Summary
George James Stebbing (1803—1860) travelled around the world with Charles Darwin on board HMS Beagle and helped him with measuring temperature on at least one occasion. However, Stebbing barely registers in Darwin’s correspondence. The only mention omits…
Matches: 1 hits
- … George James Stebbing (1803—1860) travelled around the world with Charles Darwin on board HMS …
Satire of FitzRoy's Narrative of the Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, by John Clunies Ross. Transcription by Katharine Anderson
Summary
[f.146r Title page] Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle Supplement / to the 2nd 3rd and Appendix Volumes of the First / Edition Written / for and in the name of the Author of those / Volumes By J.C. Ross. / Sometime Master of a…
Matches: 1 hits
- … [ f.146r Title page ] Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle …
Charles Darwin’s letters: a selection 1825-1859
Summary
The letters in this volume span the years from 1825, when Darwin was a student at the University of Edinburgh, to the end of 1859, when the Origin of Species was published. The early letters portray Darwin as a lively sixteen-year-old medical student. Two…
Matches: 1 hits
- … The letters in this volume span the years from 1825, when Darwin was a student at the University …
Darwin in letters, 1821-1836: Childhood to the Beagle voyage
Summary
Darwin's first known letters were written when he was twelve. They continue through school-days at Shrewsbury, two years as a medical student at Edinburgh University, the undergraduate years at Cambridge, and the of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle.…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Darwin's first known letters were written when he was twelve. They continue through his school …
Was Darwin an ecologist?
Summary
One of the most fascinating aspects of Charles Darwin’s correspondence is the extent to which the experiments he performed at his home in Down, in the English county of Kent, seem to prefigure modern scientific work in ecology.
Matches: 1 hits
- … I gave two seeds to a confounded old cock, but his gizzard ground them up; at least I cd. not …
