To Raphael Meldola   15 May [1878]1

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

May 15th

My dear Sir

I think the enclosed will interest you.— The letter to me need not be returned as I have had the only important passage for my work copied out.—2

In the letter F. M. sent me seeds of Cassia neglecta & several beetles arrived alive, having formed their cocoons, & gnawed their way out of the little peas or seeds.— These elegant beetles, with the knowledge of their manner of development may interest some Coleopterist.3

I hope to hear sometime about Dr Zacharias photographs.4

I received your obliging letter from Paris.5

Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Raphael Meldola, 3 May 1878.
2
CD enclosed the letter and enclosure (now missing) from Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878. The important passage concerned Müller’s observations of the movements of leaves of Mimosa in the rain (see letter from Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878 and n. 2). Meldola published Müller’s enclosure in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (F. Müller 1878).
3
Cassia neglecta is a synonym of Senna neglecta. The beetles were later identified in an annotation by Meldola as belonging to the genus Spermophagus (a synonym of Amblycerus, seed beetles of the subfamily Bruchinae).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11510,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11510