Ɛpsilon

From H. E. Stanley to James Torbitt   29 December 1877

Alderley Park

Decr. 29/77

Sir

in reply to your letter inquiring as to the result of the potatoe seed you sent to me in 1876, I find that potatoes raised this year from seedlings grown from your seed sown last year, are of a good size and have kept sound up to this date, whilst the ordinary potatoes about here had begun early to become unsound.1

yours obediently | Stanley

1
Torbitt had sent CD a packet of potato seeds in April 1876, together with his pamphlet on potato blight. Torbitt also sent his pamphlet and seeds to all the members of both houses of Parliament (Stanley was in the House of Lords) as well as to landowners in Ulster (see Correspondence vol. 24, letter to James Torbitt, 4 April 1876, and Torbitt 1876). Stanley evidently tested these seeds on his Alderley estate in Cheshire. No covering letter from Torbitt to CD has been found. For more on Torbitt’s research and CD’s interest, see DeArce 2008.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11296,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11296