Ɛpsilon

To M. T. Masters   10 July [1875]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

July 10th

My dear Sir

I thank you cordially for your excellent review, & which as coming from you is highly honourable to me & has given me much satisfaction,—all the more as I was quite knocked up & wearied with the subject, so that I had to take a month’s complete rest away from home.—2 Many thanks, also, for all your trouble about the gooseberry. The case seems to stand in 1875, as it did in 1867.3 If you get any important information, perhaps you will insert it in the Chronicle & then I shall see it.— I return the extracts.

I enclose a note (which please burn, & it requires no answer from you) about a curious point (i.e if it is not a cock & a bull story) which might possibly be worth your while to investigate.4

Believe me | Yours sincerely & obliged | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the gooseberry case (see n. 3, below).
2
Masters’s review of Insectivorous plants appeared in Gardeners’ Chronicle, 10 July 1875, pp. 44–5. CD had stayed at Abinger Hall, Surrey, the home of Thomas Henry and Katherine Euphemia Farrer, from 3 June to 6 July 1875 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
3
In Variation 1: 376, CD had reported two cases of gooseberry bushes that bore different kinds of berries. This was unchanged in Variation 2d ed.
4
The note has not been found.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 as] over ‘is’
2.1 burn] after del ‘burn’
2.1 it] interl
2.2 (i.e.] parenthesis over comma

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10057,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10057