Ɛpsilon

To G. J. Romanes   1 October [1878]1

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

Oct 1st

My dear Romanes

I have just read your article in the Fortnightly.2 It seems to me capitally done, & I honour you for taking so much trouble pro bono publico3 of the mass of readers. Good Lord, what nonsense the article in the Edinburgh must be. It is a bad look out that the Editor, whoever he may be, should be so ignorant & so wanting in judgment as to have admitted such an article.4 But the poor old Edinburgh seems to have played out its part & is ready for extinction.

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the article by Romanes (see n. 2, below).
2
Romanes’s article ‘The beginning of nerves in the animal kingdom’ was published in the Fortnightly Review, October 1878 (G. J. Romanes 1878a). The article gave a non-technical summary of Romanes’s research on the nervous system of the medusa form of the common jellyfish, Aurelia aurita (see G. J. Romanes 1876, 1877a, and 1877b).
3
Pro bono publico: for the public good (Latin).
4
An unsigned article in the October Edinburgh Review, ‘The Copyright Commission’, was highly critical of Thomas Henry Farrer’s ideas for changes in copyright law with regard to the book trade; it was written by James Anthony Froude ([Froude] 1878; see Wellesley index for the attribution to Froude). Farrer, who participated in the 1875–8 Royal Commission on Copyright, had asked CD for his views on aspects of the copyright question (see Correspondence vol. 24, letter from T. H. Farrer, 7 December 1876). Farrer’s views on the topic were summarised in his article in the December Fortnightly Review (Farrer 1878). Henry Reeve was the editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11712,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11712