From:
John Brodie Innes
To:
Emma Wedgwood; Emma Darwin
Date:
8 Mar 1872
Source of text:
DAR 167: 31
Summary:
Down parish and family matters.
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
Down parish and family matters.
Kind to send seeds of Aquilegia Brodii. Gives news on her sons. Glad of recent rain to help the hay.
Parish and family news.
Francis Darwin’s marriage; Francis serves as CD’s assistant.
Writes about a white rabbit which is turning fawn-coloured,
and about Scottish education.
On colour changes in rabbits. Suspects JBI’s is of impure origin.
Is correcting proof of Insectivorous plants.
News of the parish and neighbours.
CD pleased JBI is interested in his book [Cross and self-fertilisation].
He is pretty well and hard at work with Francis.
Sends forms to be signed so that the trustees of the Down Friendly Society may be properly registered.
CD has harangued the Down Friendly Club. Does not think it will dissolve.
CD’s opinion of a specimen sent by JBI from an unknown tree, and the Ross-shire tale about it.
JBI reports that the editor of Journal of Horticulture has identified the tree at Loch Carron as Sambucus racemosa, red-berried elder.
CD disappointed in Pusey’s sermon against evolution [Un-science, not science, adverse to faith (1878), sermon read by H. P. Liddon at St Mary’s, Oxford, on 3 Nov 1878]. Does not agree that religion and science can be kept as distant as Pusey desires. Geology and biology must deal with history of earth and of man. But that is no reason for bitter hostility.
JBI on CD’s integrity and the separateness of science and religion.
Reports finding a wood pigeon’s nest on the ground, though woods are nearby.
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.