Ɛpsilon

From Francis Darwin   11 June 1877

Down

June 11. 1877

My dear Father

I have got yr messages & will do them all square—1 There was a bigger sediment in the “cleaned” dish—but it is not soluble in ether.2 The teasels are all planted out & the case will be done tomorrow.3

Lettington is gone this morning for Drosera—4

I have made another big pot of mixture; the seeds have sprouted & he has begun watering—

I am glad you approve of the Nature letter.5 Here is a nice letter from Romanes6   Babs7 is all right: on Sat he lay on his back on a rug under the limes & roared with laughter looking up into the branches. We had a beautiful day for Atty & the D’Arcys8   On Sat Jimi and I dined at the Nashes to meet Moreley who spent sunday there9   They get on first rate I think.

This is written in an awful hurry

Good bye dearest father | your affec son | Frank

Please thank mother with my love for the key   I will give her messages to Mary Ann10

1
See letter to Francis Darwin, [10 June 1877]; there was evidently another letter to Francis that is now missing. CD was at Leith Hill Place in Surrey from 8 to 13 June (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
2
CD’s remarks on the sediment may have been in a letter to Francis that is now missing.
3
Francis had recently completed a paper on the teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris; F. Darwin 1877a). See letter to G. J. Romanes, 27 May [1877] and n. 3.
4
Henry Lettington was the gardener at Down House. Francis would soon undertake further experiments on the digestive powers of Drosera rotundifolia (common or round-leaved sundew; see letter to W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 18 July [1877] and n. 10).
5
Francis’s letter on the nectar-secreting glands of Pteris aquilina (a synonym of Pteridium aquilinum subsp. aquilinum, southern bracken fern), was published in Nature, 7 June 1877, pp. 100–1. See also letter from Francis Darwin, [before 21 May 1877] and n. 3, and F. Darwin 1876d.
8
Atty: Arthur Ashley Ruck. He married Elizabeth Eleanor D’Arcy in 1877 (BMD (Marriage index)).
9
Jim or Jemmy were Horace Darwin’s nicknames. Louisa A’hmuty Nash and Wallis Nash lived in Down. John Morley had corresponded with CD about the moral and aesthetic sense (see Correspondence vol. 19).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10994F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10994F