DARWIN, Charles (1809-1882) - photo 1
DARWIN, Charles (1809-1882) - photo 2

DARWIN, Charles (1809-1882)

Lot 61
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 4 410
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 794434
Lot 61 | DARWIN, Charles (1809-1882)
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
DARWIN, Charles (1809-1882)

Letter signed (‘Charles Darwin’) to [Charles Wyville Thomson], Down House, 3 May 1877.

Two pages, 202 x 126mm, bifolium, printed letter-paper headed ‘Down, Beckenham, Kent’. In the hand of Henrietta Darwin. Provenance: by descent.



Darwin declines to collaborate with Wyville Thomson in a study of material collected by the Challenger. ‘Several years ago I should have been delighted to have undertaken the work which you propose […] but I feel that I have not now strength sufficient, in as much as the whole subject has to a large extent passed out of my mind. Whenever the results are published I shall look with especial interest to the account of the Scalpellum’.



Writing in response to a letter from Charles Wyville Thomson (1830-1882), scientific director of the Challenger, soliciting his assistance in examining the cirripedes collected during the expedition of 1872-6 (1 May 1877; DCP-LETT-10947), Darwin professes himself unable to undertake the work. Darwin had previously lent his support to the younger man, backing Wyville Thomson’s application for the chair of natural history at Edinburgh (see previous lot), but a rift between the two developed following Wyville Thomson’s criticism of the theory of evolution in an 1876 lecture, reported in the 9 November edition of The Times in an article titled ‘A conclusion without premisses’. Darwin was finally moved to issue a riposte published in the 11 November 1880 edition of Nature: ‘I am sorry to find that Sir Wyville Thomson does not understand the principle of natural selection, as explained by Mr. Wallace and myself’.



Apparently unpublished.

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