Ɛpsilon

To Alphonse de Candolle   28 May 1880

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.) [Bassett, Southampton.]

May 28th 1880

My dear Sir

I am particularly obliged to you for having so kindly sent me your Phytographie; for if I had merely seen it advertised, I should not have supposed that it could have concerned me.1 As it is, I have read with very great interest about a quarter, but will not delay longer thanking you. All that you say seems to me very clear & convincing, & as in all your writings I find a large number of philosophical remarks new to me, & no doubt shall find many more. They have recalled many a puzzle through which I passed when monographing the Cirripedia; & your book in those days would have been quite invaluable to me.2 It has pleased me to find that I have always followed your plan of making notes on separate pieces of paper: I keep several scores of large portfolios, arranged on very thin shelves about 2 inches apart, fastened to the walls of my study, & each shelf has its proper name or title, & I can thus put at once every memorandum into its proper place.— Your book will, I am sure, be very useful to many young students, & I shall beg my son Francis, (who intends to devote himself to the physiology of plants) to read it carefully.3

As for myself I am taking a fortnight’s rest after sending a pile of M.S. to the Printers, & it was a piece of good fortune that your book arrived as I was getting into my Carriage, for I wanted something to read whilst away from home.4 My M.S. relates to the movement of Plants, & I think that I have succeeded in showing that all the more important great classes of movements are due to the modification of a kind of movement common to all parts of all plants from their earliest youth.

Pray give my kind remembrances to your son5 & with my highest respect & best thanks, believe me | My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

P.S. It always pleases me to exalt Plants in the organic scale, & if you will take the trouble to read my last Chapter, when my book (which will be sadly too big) is published & sent to you, I hope & think that you also will admire some of the beautiful adaptations by which seedling plants are enabled to perform their proper functions6

1
Candolle’s Phytographie laid out the general principles and traditions of nomenclature from a practical point of view (A. de Candolle 1880). CD’s copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
2
CD had produced monographs on both living and fossil species of barnacles (Living Cirripedia (1851) and (1854); Fossil Cirripedia (1851) and (1854)).
3
Francis Darwin had worked as CD’s botanical assistant and secretary since 1874 (Emma Darwin (1904), 2: 269).
4
CD was in Southampton from 25 May to 8 June 1880 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)). He had just finished writing the manuscript of Movement in plants (see letter to J. V. Carus, 28 April 1880).
6
Candolle received a copy of Movement in plants in November 1880 (see letter from Alphonse de Candolle, 23 November 1880).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12618,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12618