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To William Bowman   22 February 1878

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Feb 22 1878

My dear Bowman,

I received your letter this morning, & it was quite impossible that you should receive an answer by 4 pm today.1 But this does not signify in the least for your proposal seems to me a very good one, & I most entirely agree with you that it is far better to suggest some special question, rather than to have a general discussion compiled from books. The rule that the Essay must be “illustrative of the wisdom & beneficence of the Almighty” would confine the subjects to be proposed.2 With respect to the Vegetable Kingdom I could suggest two or three subjects about which, as it seems to me, information is much required; but these subjects would require a long course of experiment & unfortunately there is hardly any one in this country who seems inclined to devote himself to experiments.

Believe me, | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin.

LS

1
The letter from Bowman has not been found.
2
CD evidently refers to the Actonian prize, which had been awarded every seven years from 1844 onward by the managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain for an ‘essay illustrative of the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty’. The subject selected for the 1879 prize was ‘The structure and functions of the retina in all classes of animals, viewed in relation with the theory of evolution’ (see Nature, 16 January 1879, p. 256). Bowman was an ophthalmic surgeon and one of the managers of the Royal Institution (Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 8 (1875–8): 390).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11371,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11371