To M. A. T. Whitby 14 October [1847]

Down Farnborough | Kent

Oct 14^th

Dear Madam

I am extremely much obliged by your kindness in sending me so capital a suite of male & female specimens. I am surprised at their not being a marked difference in the size of their wings:¹ what you tell me of the wings of the female being smaller than those of the male, in their early growth is quite new to me.² I hope to get a friend to enquire how these facts are with the species in India.³

I am sincerely grateful for your kind promise to make further observations, on the points which interest me next summer.

Pray believe me, dear Madam | Yours truly obliged | C. Darwin

See letter to M. A. T. Whitby, 2 September [1847], for CD’s interest in variation in the moths raised from silkworms.

Cited in Variation 1: 303. Mrs Whitby’s letter has not been found.

See letter to J. D. Hooker, 10 May 1848.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1128,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1128

Summary

Thanks for a suite of male and female specimens of Lepidoptera. Lack of difference in size of wings surprises CD; the female’s being smaller than male’s in early growth is new to him. Will ask a friend in India for comparable facts.

Letter details

Record number: DCP-LETT-1128
From: Charles Robert Darwin
To: Mary Anne Theresa Whitby
Date: 14 Oct [1847]
Sent from: Down
Source of text: Lehigh University Libraries Special Collections (Honeyman Collection)
Physical description: 2pp

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Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 4.

To M. A. T. Whitby 14 October [1847]

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