Text Online
From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
William Kemp
Date:
23 Feb [1844]
Source of text:
Cambridge University Library (MS Add. 10252/34)
Summary:
Regrets the delay in sending copies of his paper.
Contributor:
Ruth Cramond
The William Kemp Collection
Epsilon’s William Kemp Collection comprises 80 letters (1840-1861) from the scientific and Scottish Borders community to William Kemp (1788-1864). Kemp was an engineer and businessman, manager of the Galashiels Gas Company, and a prominent local geologist. The collection includes a series of letters from Charles Darwin and Robert Chambers.
The letters were collated and bound into a single volume, and taken to Australia by John Kemp, a water engineer and son of William Kemp, when immigrating on SS Great Britain to Victoria in 1868. A full transcription of the collection was drafted in the 1980s in Australia by Ruth Cramond, a family connection. The collection was donated to Cambridge University Library in 2018 and has now been fully conserved and digitised.
Transcriptions, edited to Darwin Correspondence Project principles and practices, and images of the correspondence between Kemp and Darwin, together with a more detailed biography of William Kemp are available from the Darwin Correspondence Project website.
Images of all letters in the collection, including images of the original bound volume, are available from the Cambridge University Digital Library website.
Regrets the delay in sending copies of his paper.
Will have a close look at the plants in a few days’ time.
The communication arrived too late for that day’s paper, but will appear next week.
When AS visited WK forgot to show him an interestingly marked specimen.
WK hopes the subject is now closed.
WK explains that although he has effected improvements he cannot ask GM for a certificate because there has not been enough time to demonstrate them.
Thanks for sending the publication the Galashiels Weekly Journal.
Returns Mr Kemp’s paper on the morrains of the Tweed and the Gala.
Charles Darwin has asked for William Kemp’s address in order to send him a copy of his paper on Glenroy and to ask him some questions.
Intends to visit the following week and requests WK’s company rambling across the Meigle Pots.
Can WK supply any information on runes and runic inscriptions.
Sending some specimens of scales of the fossil Holoptychius Nobilissimus to William Kemp via WK’s brother in Hawick.
Thanks for Maclaren’s Sketch (Maclaren 1839 bibl_5120).
Has seen WK’s views on Rubers Law and commiserates with him on William Buckland’s disapproval.
David Milne (later David Milne Home) is preparing a paper on the geology of Roxburghshire. (Presumably Milne, David. 1842-3. Geological account of Roxburghshire. Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (15) 1844, pp. 433-502.)
Thanks for the publication, which he has read with pleasure and profit.
Thanks WK for his help recovering her belongings, and enclosing half a sovereign.
AS has come to Great Yarmouth to recuperate. If WK’s idea of the formation of the stone is correct he may find other examples.
Apologises for late acknowledgment of a specimen and two letters received in October. The fragments are now in the Museum.
Sorry to hear that WK is unable to visit.
Discusses Roderick Impey Murchison’s paper on the Silurian in the south of Scotland.
Describes his Highland tour.