Ɛpsilon

To F. B. Goodacre   20 August [1878]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R. [Barlaston, Staffordshire.]

Aug. 20th

Dear Sir

I am very much obliged for your letter & kind offer.2 The subject well deserves further investigation, but I am growing old & have much work on hand & cannot undertake anything new.— If you yourself with the aid of any friends would go on crossing half–bred birds, bred in distinct places & as little related as possible, for a few generations & publish the results, it would be a really valuable contribution to science.3 No one has made the trial systematically, & the fertility of hybrid offspring from undoubtedly distinct species is wonderfully rare.

I think it would be strongly advisable to breed exclusively from half-bred parents of well ascertained origin.—

I am writing this away from home & am not well, so pray excuse the bad hand-writing.— | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
This letter was previously published in Correspondence vol. 26 from a copy in DAR 221.4: 203. The transcription here is from the original letter. The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from F. B. Goodacre, 17 August 1878 (Correspondence vol. 26).
2
In his letter of 17 August 1878 (Correspondence vol. 26), Goodacre had offered to provide CD with geese for testing the fertility of crosses between Chinese and common geese (Anser cygnoides and Anser anser).
3
Goodacre and his friend Alfred Meadows continued crossbreeding geese; Goodacre’s paper ‘On the question of the identity of species of the common domestic and the Chinese goose’ was published in 1879 (Goodacre 1879).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11670,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11670