Ɛpsilon

From W. H. Flower to Francis Darwin   16 February 1880

Royal College of Surgeons of England. | Lincoln’s Inn Field, | (W.C.)

16th day of Feb. 1880

My dear Darwin

I send by this post addressed to your father a copy of the Catalogue of Human osteology of which I was speaking, which he might like just to spend a few minutes in looking at, but not more1—and Hunter’s Memoranda on Vegetation, which may interest you, although I find that the experiments on the growth of beans during rotation are not recorded there, but in the 5th. volume of the Catalogue of the ‘Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy’ p. 10—of which I have not a copy to spare, but you will find it in most of the libraries.2 They are also to be found in Hunter’s work “on the Blood’.3

We enjoyed our visit to Down exceedingly, and I was particularly glad to find your father so well.4

Please give our united kind regards to him and to your mother and many thanks for the pleasure they have given us

Believe me | Yours very truly | W. H. Flower

1
CD’s copy of the first part of Flower’s Catalogue of the specimens illustrating the osteology and dentition of vertebrated animals, recent and extinct, contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (Flower 1879), on human osteology, is in the Darwin Library–Down.
2
Flower sent the 1860 edition of John Hunter’s Memoranda on vegetation (Hunter 1860), which had been copied from a manuscript notebook of Hunter’s loaned to the Royal College of Surgeons (ibid., p. iii). The copy in the Darwin Library–CUL has annotations by both CD and Francis Darwin. The fifth volume of the Descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the physiological series of comparative anatomy contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London (Royal College of Surgeons 1833–40) was subtitled ‘Products of generation’ and began with a section on plants. Hunter’s experiments with beans are described in ibid. 5: 11–12.
3
The description of the bean experiments in Hunter’s Treatise on the blood, inflammation, and gun-shot wounds (Hunter 1794, pp. 237–8) is the same as that in Royal College of Surgeons 1833–40 (see n. 2, above).
4
According to Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242), Flower and his wife, Georgiana Rosetta Flower, visited Down from 14 to 16 February 1880.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12486,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12486