Ɛpsilon

To Hugh Cuming   [October? 1849]1

Down Farnborough Kent

Saturday Evening

My dear Sir

I have now described & named all your specimens of Pedunculata, & will bring them back to you, when I come up for first meeting of Geolog. Society in early November.—2

I have got to go over most of the genera again, to compare specimens lately received, & amongst these I have from Paris, a Lithotrya from the Friendly Islands, which I suspect is the same with your single specimen from the Philippines;3 will you be so kind as to lend me your specimen again for comparison, & I will return it with the others.— If you have picked up lately any fresh Pedunculate Cirripedes, it would be a great saving of time to me, if you would send them me, so that I might compare them now that I have got to go over most of the genera again—

I will send the Carrier on Thursday morning next to your house, for the chance of your being so kind as to lend me the Lithotrya & anything new amongst the Pedunculata.—

As soon as I have written out my generic descriptions of the Pedunculata, I shall set to work with the sessile cirripedes4 & I confess I quite dread the genus Balanus.—

Your’s most sincerely | C. Darwin

1
Dated on the basis of CD’s reference to a council meeting of the Geological Society (see n. 2, below).
2
See letter to Hugh Cuming, [4 November 1849], in which CD arranged to call on Cuming. CD attended a council meeting of the Geological Society on 7 November 1849, his first attendance since January (Council Minute Books, Geological Society Archives).
3
Lithotrya truncata (a synonym of L. valentiana). CD cited only two specimens, one from the Friendly Archipelago (Tonga Islands), in the collection of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and one from the Philippines, collected by Cuming (Living Cirripedia (1851): 366–7).
4
CD began describing the sessile cirripedes (Balanidae) on 28 April 1850 (‘Journal’; Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.3 single] interl
2.5 lately] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1258,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1258