Ɛpsilon

To A. S. Wilson   4 [June] 18791

Down

Jan: 4. 1879

My dear Sir

Your excellent article in the Gardeners Chronicle has led, I have no doubt, to my receiving the enclosed letter, from a very great man, the Governor General of Turkestan, and he encloses his letter in an envelope worthy of his lofty position!—2 I should hope and think that a collection of the varieties of wheat from such little known regions might possess some interest. Shall I send them to you to describe or to do whatever you may think fit, whenever I receive them? If so, will you kindly make any memoranda which may be required, from the enclosed letter, which be so good as to return, as I must thank his Excellency for his gracious act.3

Pray believe me, my dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Charles Darwin

Copy

1
The month is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from K. P. Kaufman, 9 May 1879. The copyist wrote ‘Jan’ in error.
2
See letter from K. P. von Kaufman, 9 May 1879. Konstantin Petrovich Kaufman mentioned having read in the newspapers that CD was studying different varieties of wheat. CD had received a large box of wheat from the governor of the Russian province of Saratov, Mikhail Nikolaevich Galkin-Vraskoi (see Correspondence vol. 26, letter from G. M. Asher, 14 February 1878). Kaufman could not have read Wilson’s article on the Russian wheat, since it was published in Gardeners’ Chronicle, 24 May 1879, after Kaufman wrote to CD (Wilson 1879).
3
For CD’s letter to Kaufman, see Correspondence vol. 30, letter to K. P. von Kaufman, 4 June 1879. The wheat specimens never arrived (see letter to A. S. Wilson, 30 December [1879]).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11820,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11820