Ɛpsilon

To G. J. Romanes   7 March 1878

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

March 7. 1878

My dear Romanes,

My gardener1 says that he never sows onion seed till the middle of march, as they are apt to be injured by frost. In this case I cannot conceive that they will be ready for you by May.2 Shall I risk it & have them sown at once?

I am very glad to hear that your Essay will be published in the Fortnightly;3 I happened to be thinking about it but the other day. The Books were dispatched by Rail this morning4

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS

2
Romanes had been carrying out grafting experiments on root vegetables in order to test CD’s hypothesis of pangenesis (see Correspondence vol. 23, letter from G. J. Romanes, 29 September 1875). In December 1877, CD agreed to have some onions supplied by Romanes planted in his garden (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter from G. J. Romanes, 2 December 1877, and letter from Charles and Francis Darwin to G. J. Romanes, 5 December 1877).
3
CD probably refers to Romanes’s article ‘The beginning of nerves in the animal kingdom’, which was published in Fortnightly Review in October (G. J. Romanes 1878a). CD had also encouraged Romanes to have his lecture ‘The scientific evidence of organic evolution: a discourse’ (G. J. Romanes 1877c) reprinted in Fortnightly Review (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to G. J. Romanes, [1 and 2 December 1877]); however, this did not appear until 1881 (G. J. Romanes 1881).
4
The books have not been identified.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11405,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11405