Ɛpsilon

To Raphael Meldola   14 December [1878]

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

Dec. 14th

My dear Sir

I am very glad that you are making good progress with the book.— You could not apply to a worse person than myself on any philological question. I presume that “phyletische” has been adopted or modified from Häckel.1 As the latter uses the word, it has nearly the sense of genealogical. It always applies to the line of descent, & therefore differs somewhat from “innate”; for an inherited character, though derived from the father alone or only a single generation, would be innate in the child, I shd think “phyletic” wd. do very well, if you gave the German word & an explanation, in a foot-note.2

There has been a delay in answering your letter, but I have just heard from my son who is away from home, & he says that he is sorry but he cannot well spare the time to Lecture.—3

My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Postmark: 14 DE 78

2
In his translator’s preface to Weismann 1882, p. xiii, Meldola wrote, ‘I have intentionally adopted literal translations of certain technical expressions which might, I think, be advantageously introduced into our biological vocabularies’. Meldola used the term ‘phyletic’ throughout Weismann 1882.
3
In his letter of 11 December 1878, Meldola had asked whether Francis Darwin would give an evening lecture on a botanical topic. Francis was in Cambridge (see letter from G. H. Darwin, 14 December 1878); his letter has not been found.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.2 14] ‘4’ over ‘3’
1.00 an inherited] above del ‘a’
1.00 alone] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11793,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11793