From:
John Brodie Innes
To:
Charles Robert Darwin
Date:
19 Aug 1880
Source of text:
DAR 167: 36
Summary:
Sends specimens of what he takes to be barnacles found on rocks in the mountains.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
Sends specimens of what he takes to be barnacles found on rocks in the mountains.
JBI’s "barnacles" would have been extraordinary, but they are hard lichens.
Has revisited Cambridge.
"Barnacles" [from rocks in Scottish mountains, identified as lichens],
burglar alarms,
and family news.
Has heard that land may be available for parsonage at Down.
Hensleigh Wedgwood has told CD that land JBI had inquired about will be sold at auction with the house [Trowmer [Tromer!?] Lodge].
JBI’s observations on bees and wasps. The hexagonal cells made by solitary queen wasps do not fit explanation in Origin.
CD interested in JBI’s observations of behaviour of bees. Finds his criticism about hexagonal cells made by queen wasps a good one. Cannot remember how he got out of the difficulty.
His book on worms to be published soon.
E. A. Darwin has died after short illness.
Did not intend his last letter as criticism. Is sure CD would not "wriggle out" of a difficulty if he had observed it.
Sends CD a wasps’ nest.
Wasps’ nest has arrived.
Gives his view of how queen wasp builds a hexagonal cell by straightening walls between several cells, which she builds at the same time.