Ɛpsilon

To James Smith of Jordanhill   6 February [1848]1

Down Farnborough Kent

Feb. 6th

My dear Sir

I thank you very sincerely for your kind letter & present of the fossil Balani.2 After my work is completed I shall present my entire collection to the British Museum, & yours shall go with them.3 I am much obliged for your request to Mr Landsborough4 to collect the species where he lives, for I am anxious to get specimens from a good many places to make out the range of our British species. It will be in very good time when you come up in the Spring.— When I go next to London, I shall probably find the fossils at the Geolog. Soc.5

Pray believe me | Yours sincerely | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to James Smith of Jordanhill, 28 January [1848] (Correspondence vol. 4).
2
Smith’s letter has not been found. CD had asked Smith for specimens of the cirripede genus Balanus from Portugal (Correspondence vol. 4, letter to James Smith of Jordanhill, 28 January [1848]). See Fossil Cirripedia (1854), p. 235.
3
CD presented his fossil cirripede collection to the British Museum in 1854 (see Withers 1928–53, 2: 5, and Correspondence vol. 5, letter to J. E. Gray, 28 March [1854] and n. 3), after finishing Fossil Cirripedia (1851) and (1854).
5
CD attended a council meeting of the Geological Society of London on 19 April 1848 (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1153F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1153F