Ɛpsilon

From Francis Darwin   [after 28 February 1878]1

My dear Father,

I am going to get some of the Heracleum seed sowed today in case you want it. I have had the Cycas planted2   Do you want anything done to the potatoes sent by Torbitt.3   A lot of Ægilops has come from Wilson   I have written a scrap saying in yr absence I acknowledge & thank &c4

No sleeping seedlings have appeared— I have made notes about sea kale—5 I have been chiefly idle but also testing Thermograph in which I want Jimmy’s help.6 You must feel very queer all by yourselves in the modern babylon.7 I hope you are getting square again. Bernard is very jolly and larky in every way.8 I weighed him on Jimmys spring balance but it only made him 30 pounds & I’m sure he is more than that; he didn’t like it at all, I looped a rope under his arms & hooked him on, & he kicked his legs about in the air & squeaked to get free, & I couldn’t persuade him it was amusing—

I don’t understand what potato agitation you are after.9 I hope mother hasn’t got a regulation headache yet—

Yr affec son | Frank Darwin

I have my lecture beautifully copied & have sent old M. S. to Nature; leaving out a few things10

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter, the letter to J. D. Hooker, 28 [February 1878], and the letter from A. S. Wilson, 28 February 1878.
2
Heracleum is a genus in the carrot family (Apiaceae). CD had received Cycas seeds from Joseph Dalton Hooker (letter to J. D. Hooker, 28 [February 1878] and n. 7).
4
CD was sent seed of Aegilops ovata (a synonym of A. geniculata, ovate goatgrass) by Alexander Stephen Wilson (see letter from A. S. Wilson, 28 February 1878). Francis’s note to Wilson has not been found.
5
CD and Francis were experimenting with seakale in connection with their work on bloom; notes dated February 1878 are in DAR 68: 58.
6
‘Jimmy’ was one of Horace Darwin’s nicknames. No other correspondence about the thermograph, an instrument for recording temperature changes, has been found. For a contemporary description of the instrument, see Nature, 15 September 1881, p. 470.
7
CD and Emma Darwin stayed at the home of Richard and Henrietta Emma Litchfield at 4 Bryanston Street, London, from 27 February to 5 March (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
9
CD was trying to obtain government support for James Torbitt’s experiments on breeding blight-resistant potatoes (see letter to James Torbitt, 26 February 1878).
10
Francis gave a lecture titled ‘The analogies of plant and animal life’ at the London Institution on 11 March 1878 (see Nature, 14 March 1878, pp. 388–91).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11754G,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11754G