From G. H. Darwin   6 March 1880

Trin. Coll. Camb.

Sat. Mar 6. 80

My dear Father,

The enclosed letter has come to me & as I don’t understand what it is about I think it must be meant for you.1

I received a letter yesterday morning from Reginald Darwin enclosing one of Dr. D’s visiting cards, of which a packet was found by one of his sisters. It is a curious looking card & I will send it on shortly. I have written to thank him & to tell him that I shall send on a copy of the pedigree etc. shortly.2

I have sent off my paper to the R.S.3 & have begun trying another point but am sadly afraid it is too hard for me—for it turns on purely mathematical difficulties. I wd. give a great deal to be able to solve it, as I feel convinced that it contains the physical meaning of Bode’s Law—an empirical law concerning the mean distances of the planets from the sun.4 I am afraid the difficulties are of a kind which if insurmountable soon are not to be got over at all. I said that Tait was reporter on my paper, but I now feel certain that it is a mistake for Thomson—for Thomson has reported on all the others & Tait is not an F.R.S & has indeed a sort of quarrel or contempt for the Society. I shall be glad if this is so.5

I expect we shall get to work at our pendulum again next week but there has been more bricklaying &.c than I thought at first there wd. be. Horace & Ida go to Oxford today.6 I suppose I shall be home in about a fortnight. I sent off a tea-service to Jackson at 6 Q.A. yesterday & hope it will have come safe. I’m getting on tol. well with my cold. I hope Mother is standing London well7

Yr. affec son | G H Darwin

1
The enclosure has not been found.
2
Erasmus Darwin’s visiting card has not been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL. George said he would copy the Darwin pedigree prepared by Joseph Lemuel Chester; see letter from G. H. Darwin, 4 March 1880 and n. 1.
3
G. H. Darwin 1880; see letter from G. H. Darwin, 4 March 1880 and n. 3.
4
For more on Bode’s law, developed by Johann Elert Bode, and George’s use of it, see Nieto 1972, pp. 55–7.
5
Peter Guthrie Tait. For William Thomson’s previous support of George’s work, see Correspondence vol. 27, letter to G. H. Darwin, 31 May [1879]. In fact G. H. Darwin 1880 was not refereed and the paper was voted to be published in abstracted form at a meeting a week before it was read to the fellows of the Royal Society of London (Royal Society archives, GB 117 MS/421).
7
William Jackson was the butler at Down House; on 31 March 1880 he married Sophia Steer at St Mary’s, Down. From 4 to 8 March, CD and Emma stayed at 6 Queen Anne Street, London, the home of CD’s brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12518,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12518