Ɛpsilon

To A. C. Ramsay   17 June 1880

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

June 17th 1880

My dear Ramsay

Will you have the kindness to glance at your 2 enclosed notes (which for the love of Heaven return to me carefully) & answer me one simple question, viz whether any plants or weeds grew in the interstices of the stones, & secondly whether trees were near so that leaves often or ever were blown into the court.—1 I am putting together some notes on the action of worms & I find that naturalists differ much whether worms can live without obtaining dead vegetable matter from the surface,— indeed some deny that they get any nutriment out of the humus.— Your case of the little court interests me in other ways.—

I have not been lately in London, but during my two last visits I was so unlucky as to miss you in Jermyn St, & thus missed some pleasant talk2

Believe me | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

I forget whether you have ever seen many worm castings in the court-yard, which I suppose is occasionally swept out.

1
CD evidently enclosed Ramsay’s letters of 27 December 1871 and 3 January 1872 (Correspondence vols. 19 and 20) describing a pavement running from his house to his garden that had subsided apparently as a result of the action of earthworms. The case appeared in Earthworms, pp. 192–3.
2
CD was in London from 3 to 11 December 1879 and from 4 to 8 March 1880 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)). Ramsay was director-general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, based at 28 Jermyn Street, London.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 or weeds] interl
1.5 that] interl
1.6 without] after del ‘at’
4.1 many] above del ‘may’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12638,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12638