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The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Sabine’s Royal Society address [awarding the Copley Medal to CD], in referring to the Origin, did not contain the words "expressly excluded". The actual words were "expressly omitted from the grounds of our award". This was not meant to place the Origin on a sort of index expurgatorium, but was a simple statement of fact.
Wishes to correct an expression in his last letter which is "perhaps not rigorously exact": he should not have said "declining to honour it [the Origin] with the Copley Medal" but simply "not honouring it with the Copley medal". "Declining implies having been asked and there was no asking in the present case."
He is certain he heard "expressly excluded" [of Origin from consideration in Royal Society award of Copley Medal]. Believes GGS may have inadvertently substituted "excluded" for "omitted". THH then submits his reasons for objecting to the passage as a whole even with the word "omitted".
It is improbable that he changed the wording of Sabine’s address without his noticing. Proceeds to defend the passage by quoting the rules of the award of the Copley Medal and the Royal Society Council’s action in this case, which is accurately presented in the wording of the award.
THH never imagined that "we" referred to anyone but the [Royal] Society Council. Still objects to inclusion of the passage, since "an agreement to say nothing" [about the Origin] does not justify comment on it by one party to the agreement.
Corrects a minor error in his last letter.
Urges THH to return proofs of his paper to Royal Society. Some authors are more ready to come down on reviewers and secretary for delay than to get on with their own proofs.
THH rejects GGS’s charges. Chides him with possibility that if he substituted "Falconer" for "Busk" he might have done it also for "excluded" and "omitted".