Ɛpsilon

From J. D. Caton   8 October 1877

Ottawa Illinois

October 8 1877

My Dear Sir

Your favor of the 10th of August arrived during my absence.1 I was glad to hear the book arrived safely and that its appearance pleased you—2 I hope you have found some of my observations to interest you. Let me add one observation since the book was written. I castrated two young Wapiti3 last winter. On the oldest, little knobs sprung up in places of the antlers 12 inch high but on the other nothing appreciable of the sort is observed— I think it safe to say if the deer is castrated before it is three months old, the growth of the antlers will be entirely suppressed.

It will afford me the greatest pleasure to present Sir Victor Brooke with a copy of my book and should feel highly honored if he will take the trouble to peruse if you will but favor me with his address.,4 but please ask him to remember that I am not a professed Naturalist but only an amature, my studies in this direction having been pursued as a recreation since I retired from judicial. The labor of my life has been in my profession.

Most truly yours | J D Caton

1
CD’s letter has not been found.
2
CD had evidently acknowledged receipt of Caton’s book The antelope and deer of America (Caton 1877). Caton’s previous work on deer and elk was used by CD in Descent (see Correspondence vol. 16, letter to J. D. Caton, 18 September 1868 and n. 5). CD’s annotated copy of Caton 1877 is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
3
The wapiti or elk is Cervus canadensis.
4
Victor Alexander Brooke was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who was resident for most of the year in Pau, France; he had visited CD in May (see letter to W. H. Flower, 19 May 1877 and n. 1). Brooke had established a large herd of deer at his Irish seat in Fermanagh, and was studying antelopes (Stephen 1894, pp. 8–9 and 31–2).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11174,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11174