Ɛpsilon

To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   27 January [1880]1

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

Jan 27th

My dear Dyer.

Asa Gray has sent me cotton-seeds (so that I now have a superfluity) & he asks me to ask Hooker whether you know a var. of Cotton called the “Vine Cotton”.2 A planter3 in the S. wants some seed of this var, & Gray wants to send him some.— Can you oblige them by sending such seeds to Gray?

The Planter says he formerly received the seeds of this var. from England.—

Ever yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

If you will let me hear sometime I will write to Gray or if you are writing to him you can just say whether you know the var.

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Asa Gray, 12 January 1880.
2
Gray had sent seeds of Gossypium hirsutum (upland or short-staple cotton) and G. barbadense (pima or extra-long-staple cotton; see letter from Asa Gray, 12 January 1880). He had asked CD to write to Joseph Dalton Hooker for seeds of ‘Vine cotton’.
3
A marginal note on the letter reads: ‘Col [or ‘W’] Clarke written to’; the planter has not been further identified.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 (so … superfluity)] parentheses over commas
1.2 Hooker] ‘H’ over ‘Dr’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12440,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12440