To James Torbitt   4 April 1876

Down,

April 4, 1876.

Dear Sir

I thank you for your very obliging letter and present of the essay and seeds.1 I cannot but think that the principle on which you are acting is right, and if you succeed you will have conferred an enormous benefit on the public.2 I am sorry that I was compelled to decline my answer being published, for I cannot to the present hour remember what I said3

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin.

Copy

1
See letter from James Torbitt, 1 April 1876. Torbitt sent his pamphlet on potato blight, Torbitt 1876, which was accompanied by a packet of seeds. CD’s copy and the seeds have not been found.
2
Torbitt proposed that growing potatoes from seed and collecting seeds from plants that resisted disease over successive generations was the best way to improve yields (Torbitt 1876, pp. 3–4).
3
See letter from James Torbitt, 1 April 1876 and n. 2. Torbitt wanted to publish CD’s reply to the question ‘what is an individual?’, contained in the letter to James Torbitt, 26 January 1876.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10440,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10440