Ɛpsilon

To J. V. Carus   4 March 1877

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

March 4. 1877

My dear Sir,

I am quite ashamed of my self for my stupidity & am much obliged to you. There is an error but it is exactly the reverse of what I pointed out. Will you please to have an erratum inserted as follows.1

p 191 bottom line beginning with the words “The sole conjecture which I can form is that the crossed seeds &c” read “The sole conjecture which I can form is that the self-fertilised seeds had not been sufficiently ripened, & thus produced weakly plants which grew at first at an abnormally quick rate, as occurred with Iberis.”2

Pray forgive me & believe me yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

There is no error in p. 2753

LS(A)

1
In his letter of 19 February 1877, CD had pointed out a supposed error on p. 275 of Cross and self fertilisation for Carus to correct in the German translation. Carus questioned whether it was an error in his letter of 26 February 1877.
2
The correction was made to Carus trans. 1877d, p. 182, and to Cross and self fertilisation 2d ed., pp. 191–2, with the final clause expanded to ‘as occurred with seedlings from not well-ripened self-fertilised seeds of Iberis.’
3
See n. 1, above.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 is … &c] interl in CD’s hand before del ‘&c’
4.1 There … 275] in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10877,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10877