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To Osbert Salvin   22 August [1875]1

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

Aug. 22d

My dear Mr. Salvin

I am very much obliged for your memoir which I have read with very great interest. I am surprised that the birds from the different islands prove so similar. How much has been done since my days. It would, indeed, as you say be a fine work for anyone to investigate the perplexing forms on the spot.2

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S | You will see in my Journal, that several specimens ought, if possible, to be collected, of each of the very commonest species from each island, & their habits, nests, eggs, young &c, compared.—3 What a flood of light would be thus thrown on Variation!

1
The year is established by the reference to Salvin 1875 (see n. 2 below).
2
CD’s lightly annotated copy of Salvin’s paper on the birds of the Galápagos archipelago (Salvin 1875) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. CD marked a passage in which Salvin concluded that certain species did not have as restricted a range as CD had claimed (ibid., p. 465). No covering letter from Salvin has been found. For more on CD’s bird specimens from the Galápagos, and later commentary by Salvin and others, see Sulloway 1984 and Steinheimer 2004.
3
In Journal of researches, his published account of the Beagle voyage, CD put forward evidence that different species of mocking thrushes (Mimus) inhabited different islands in the Galápagos archipelago; he suspected this was also the case with finches (Geospiza), but had not kept the specimens collected from each island entirely separate (Journal of researches (1860), pp. 394–5; see also preface, p. vii).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.2 island] altered from ‘islands’
3.3 young] after del ‘&’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10132A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10132A