Ɛpsilon

To G. J. Romanes   23 July 1879

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

July 23d/79

My dear Romanes.

I take great interest in Grant Allen & am much grieved at what you say. I thank you for telling me about the subscription & send a cheque for 25£.1 Should more be urgently required I shall be glad to give more.— Poor fellow it is a most melancholy case.—

We were very sorry that you could not come to us before your northern migration; but we hope at some future time to see Mrs Romanes & you here.—2 I have not had a very good time of late & have been compelled to knock off work occasionally. On Augt 1st. we all go to Coniston for a month, & a nice treat it will be if the weather keeps as it is!3

I enclose paper in case you care about such cases: Mr Meehan, however, I look at as a very inaccurate observer.4 I wish you all good fortune with the Medusæ.5

Pray present my kind compliments to Mrs. Romanes & believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
No letter from Romanes mentioning Grant Allen has been found. Allen had been suffering from overwork and illness; Romanes and George Croom Robertson together raised £202 to send Allen and his family to the Riviera for the winter of 1879–80 (Morton 2005, p. 55). CD recorded a payment, dated 23 July 1879, of £25 under the heading ‘Romanes for subscription for Grant Allen’ in his Account books–cash account (Down House MS).
2
Romanes spent summers at his family’s home in Dunskaith, Ross-shire, where he carried out most of his research on the nervous system of medusae (the sexual form of individuals of the phylum Cnidaria; see, for example, Romanes 1876–7, a study of some species of Cnidaria native to Scotland). Romanes’s wife was Ethel Romanes.
3
The Darwins stayed at Coniston in the Lake District from 2 to 27 August 1879 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).The reference to the weather was ironic; the summer of 1879 was the wettest in England since records began in 1750 (Briffa et al. 2009, p. 1897).
4
The paper by Thomas Meehan has not been identified, but may have been Meehan’s report on his success in producing a graft-hybrid apple (Meehan 1876). On CD’s estimation of Meehan, see Correspondence vol. 26, letter to Asa Gray, 21 [and 22] January 1878.
5
See n. 2, above. Romanes’s final observations on the nervous system of medusae were summarised in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 28 (1879): 266–7, and published in full in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Romanes 1879).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.1 in] altered from ‘on’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12168,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12168