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To Librarian, Royal Society of London   27 October [1856]1

Down.

Oct. 27th

Dear Sir

I will send by Carrier, (or bring myself) on Thursday morning, the Books in hand, & shd. be obliged for vol. of Phil. Trans. for 1799, the Part with paper by A. Knight on Fecundation of Plants.2 Also a great work descriptive of animals in Ld. Derby’s menagerie.—3

Yours faithfully | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by an entry in the Royal Society Library lending register: CD borrowed Philosophical Transactions on 30 Oct 1856, and both volumes of Gleanings (J. E. Gray 1846 and J. E. Gray 1850a later in November. (Felicity Henderson, pers. comm.). This letter was originally published in vol. 3 of the Correspondence with the conjectured date 27 Oct [1846 or 1848?].
2
Knight 1799. This and other works by Thomas Andrew Knight were frequently cited by CD in Natural selection, Origin, Variation, and his botanical works.
3
J. E. Gray 1846. Cited in Natural selection and Variation. Edward Smith Stanley, Earl of Derby, had formed a menagerie at Knowsley Hall, Lancashire.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1013,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1013