From G. J. Romanes   10 September 1878

Dunskaith, Ross-shire, N.B.:

Sept. 10, 1878.

My dear Mr. Darwin,—

Having been away for a week’s deer-stalking in the hills, I have only to-day received your letter together with the book. Thank you very much for both, and also for the hints about Espinas and Bartlett.1 I am glad you thought well of the letter to the ‘Times.’ In a book I shall be able to make more evident what I mean.2

Frank’s idea of ‘a happy family’ is a very good one; but I think my mother would begin to wish that my scientific inquiries had taken some other direction.3

The baby too, I fear, would stand a poor chance of showing itself the fittest in the struggle for existence.

I am now going to write my concluding paper on Medusæ, also to try some experiments on luminosity of marine animals.4

Ever sincerely and most respectfully yours, | Geo. J. Romanes.

1
See letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September [1878]. CD had sent a copy of Joseph Delboeuf’s La psychologie comme science naturelle, son présent et son avenir (Psychology as natural science, its present and future; Delboeuf 1876), a reference probably to Alfred Espinas’s Des sociétés animales: étude de psychologie comparée (Animal societies: a study in comparative psychology; Espinas 1877), and advice to contact Abraham Dee Bartlett about keeping monkeys.
2
See letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September [1878] and n. 3. Romanes’s book on animal intelligence was published in 1882.
3
See letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September [1878]. Francis Darwin had suggested Romanes should keep ‘an idiot, a deaf-mute, a monkey & a baby’ in order to compare their respective intelligences. Romanes’s mother was Isabella Gair Rose Romanes.
4
‘Concluding observations on the locomotor system of Medusae’ (G. J. Romanes 1879). Romanes did not publish on his experiments on luminosity.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11687,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11687