Ɛpsilon

To W. C. Williamson   12 February [1848]

Down Farnborough Kent

Feb. 12 th

My dear Sir

I am much obliged for your letter. I am sorry to say I cannot find the lagoon-island calc. mud & suppose I must have sent all to Ehrenberg.—1 I enclose a specimen of the calc. encrustation from Ascension: larger specimens are infinitely more frondescent.2

The coarse rounded & glazed particles of corals &c which you sent me from the Gold Coast resemble the matter thrown up on the shores of Ascension. Beautiful the sand from Devonshire.— As you are interested in the disintegration of shells &c, I send some specimens from K. George Sound in Australia of fine winnowed particles of shells passing into white impalpable powder & afterwards becoming half crystalline by rain water. The facts are given in my vol. on Volcanic Islands.3 I also send a crystal of gypsum from one of the great natural salt-lakes in N. Patagonia:4 within this crystals there is some mud, & very likely infusoria, as animals inhabi[t] this lake of brine.—

Wishing you every success in your interesting labours | I beg to remain | dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | C. Darwin

Do not trouble yourself to acknowledge this.—

1
CD had supplied Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg with numerous specimens of dust, mud, rock, and soil between 1844 and 1846.
3
Volcanic islands, pp. 144–8.
4
Described in South America, pp. 73–5.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 much] after omitted point
2.2 matter] after omitted point
2.2 up] ‘p’ over illeg
2.3 shells] over ‘ech’
2.5 powder] ‘p’ over illeg
2.8 this crystals] ‘this’ over ‘the’
2.9 inhabi[t]] ‘inhabi=’ in MS
2.9 this] over illeg
3.1 labours] ‘s’ added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1156,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1156