Ɛpsilon

To H. W. Bates   26 January 1879

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

Jan 26th 79

My dear Bates

It will give me real pleasure to propose you for the Royal.1 You will see that you yourself must not circulate the certificate,—not that there can be the least impropriety in your asking any of your friends.— Will you therefore fill up all the necessary particulars, giving a pretty full list of your publications & return the paper to me. At the same time give me a list with addresses of such men as you wd like to sign, & I will then write & forward certificate to each.—2 I do not know who are on the Council & it is a confounded bore that some of the best men, to whom I shd. naturally apply, such as Hooker & Huxley are excluded.3 This makes it the more necessary that I shd. have some sort of list from you.—

Ever yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

You must not be surprised if you are not elected the first time, for hardly anybody is thus elected.—4

1
Bates had asked CD to propose him for fellowship of the Royal Society of London (see letter from H. W. Bates, 25 January 1879). Bates was proposed for election as a fellow of the Royal Society of London on 27 January 1879 by CD, Philip Lutley Sclater, Francis Galton, George Rolleston, William Henry Flower, Henry Tibbats Stainton, Robert McLachlan, St George Jackson Mivart, James Augustus Grant, and George John Romanes; he was elected in 1881 (Royal Society archives, GB 117 EC/1881/09).
3
Joseph Dalton Hooker was president of the Royal Society and Thomas Henry Huxley was biological secretary (ODNB).
4
Bates was elected in 1881.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11848,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11848