From Raphael Meldola   2 January [1878]1

Entomological Society | London | 21 John Street, | Bedford Row, | London W.C.

Jan. 2/77

My dear Sir,

I should very much like to see Fritz Müller’s article in Kosmos of Dec. if you will kindly send it to me by post. I returned the No. you were good enough to send me on Oct. 22nd. a few days after you sent it. I hope it has not been lost in the post. A letter accompanied it.2 If you cannot find it please inform me what No. it was & I will take immediate steps to replace it.

I have not yet succeeded in finding a publisher for Weismanns essays— Van Voorst & Murray are both afraid to touch it & my time has been so much occupied that I have not had leisure to push enquiries in other directions.3

The entomological notes which I submitted to you some time since will appear with some additions in the Feb. No. of the “Ann. & Mag. of Nat. Hist.”4

I beg to direct your attention to the forthcoming Part IV of the “Trans. Ent. Soc.” The “Proceedings” bound up with it contain a great deal of matter relating to stridulation & is important with reference to your discussion of this phenomenon in the “Descent of Man”. I have been talking over the subject with Wood-Mason this evening & he is anxious to submit to your consideration certain views of the subject which he has broached in his paper on Mygale stridulans (a copy of which he will send you).5

I am anxious to get recruits for the ranks of the Entom. Soc.6 & should be glad to see your son Mr. Francis Darwin in our list of Members. Would he do me the favour of allowing me to propose him at the next meeting Jan. 16th.?

Yours very faithfully, | R. Meldola.

Wishing you the compliments of the season.

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Raphael Meldola, 1 January [1878]. Meldola dated it 1877 in error.
2
See letter to Raphael Meldola, 1 January [1878] and n. 2. The October 1877 issue of Kosmos contained the second part of Müller’s article ‘Beobachtungen an brasilianischen Schmetterlingen’ (Observations on Brazilian butterflies; F. Müller 1877a). The letter that Meldola sent when he returned it has not been found. CD’s annotated copy of the issue is in the collection of unbound journals in the Darwin Archive–CUL.
3
Meldola proposed a translation of August Weismann’s Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie (Weismann 1875a and 1876) in his letter to CD of 20 October [1877] (Correspondence vol. 25). The translation was published in 1882 by Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington as Studies in the theory of descent (Weismann 1882). John Murray was CD’s publisher; John van Voorst was a well-known natural history publisher.
4
Meldola 1878. Meldola had previously discussed with CD the publication of these notes from a letter by Fritz Müller; see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from Raphael Meldola, 13 September 1877.
5
James Wood-Mason’s note on stridulation in Mygale stridulans (Wood-Mason 1877) appeared in the December 1877 issue of Transactions of the Entomological Society of London; the Proceedings in the same issue contain remarks on stridulation in other insects and scorpions (pp. xvi, xviii–xix, and xxvii–xxix). Mygale stridulans is a synonym of Chilobrachys stridulans, a spider in the family Theraphosidae (tarantulas). CD discussed stridulation in spiders and insects extensively in Descent.
6
Meldola was one of the secretaries of the Entomological Society of London.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11308,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11308