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To Anton Dohrn   15 February 1880

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

Feb. 15th 1880

Dear Dr. Dohrn

I thank you sincerely for your kind congratulations, & beg you to return my best acknowledgments to all the naturalists at the Station, who have joined you sending their kind message.—1 I rejoice most truly to hear of the 1500£ subvention, & trust it may be permanent.2 This will remove the manifold anxieties from which you have suffered; whilst from the first you deserved the highest sympathy, & encouragement.

I was thinking of writing to you on a small point. Perhaps you saw in the papers that the Turin Socy honoured me to an extraordinary degree by awarding me the Bressa prize.3 Now it occurs to me that if your Station wanted some piece of apparatus of about the value of 100£ I shd. very much like to be allowed to pay for it. Will you be so kind as to keep this in mind, & if any want should occur to you, I wd send you a cheque at any time.—4

With all good wishes for your own success & happiness & for the prosperity of the Station, believe me | My Dear Dr Dohrn | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
See letter from Anton Dohrn, 11 February 1880; Dohrn had sent birthday greetings to CD.
2
The Zoological Station at Naples, of which Dohrn was director, had received the grant from the Imperial German government; the grant was not made part of the regular government budget until later (see letter from Anton Dohrn, 11 February 1880 and n. 2).
3
CD was awarded the Bressa Prize in late 1879 (see Correspondence vol. 27, letter from Michele Lessona, 28 December 1879). CD recorded the receipt of £418 18s. 10d. under the heading ‘Bressa prize’ on 17 January 1880 (CD’s Account books–banking account (Down House MS)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12483,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12483