Ɛpsilon

From Francis Darwin   [1 August 1880]1

Aberdovey

Sunday

Dear Father

Many thanks for your letter, Natures B. Z. &c. I shall write to Stahl & will give you message2   I am glad my corrections have been useful.3 I was very glad to find that you & mother approved of Ubbadub being sent away. The other Miss Pedley is unwell now I expect with measles.4

I have been up to the furrowed place on the mountain, Mr Ruck5 was told by the farmer that his the farmer’s grandfather remembered it being ploughed   Mr Ruck thinks it was about 60–80 years ago. I dug two places. one about 48 cm deep one an inch or two less (I havn’t a foot rule here) & then I got down to debris of slate rock, I saw no worms   How deep ought I to dig? In the autumn they will look on these old fields for worms. Moles certainly go up on the mountain as high as these places; Mr Ruck doesn’t know what they go after as he doesn’t believe there are earth worms there   There is something among the roots of the grass for the rooks tear up great patches. If Atty’s Regt stops on the Peiwar he will write to the Dr who is fond of such things & ask whether there earthworms there; Atty is almost sure there are; it is 9000 ft high there.6

I have had some jolly fishing & caught some decent sized sea-trout: the worst of it is you suffer such agony over those you miss. I lost one about 3 pounds yesterday through trying to land him in a bad place & I might have taken him down the rapid to a gravelly shore & landed him if I had known it was there.

I have found a good many sea shore plants new to me on the sand hills here.

I like Ubbadubs cannon joke: please give him my love & say I will write to him— | Yrs affec | F. D.

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Francis Darwin, 28 July [1880]. In 1880, the Sunday following 28 July was 1 August.
2
CD had sent Francis a paper by Ernst Stahl (Stahl 1880; see letter to Francis Darwin, 28 July [1880] and n. 6). CD evidently also sent issues of Botanische Zeitung and Nature.
3
Francis was correcting proof-sheets for Movement in plants.
4
Ubbadub was Francis’s son, Bernard Darwin. Mary Eliza and Eve Eleanor Annie Pedley were stepdaughters of Francis’s brother-in-law Richard Mathews Ruck.
5
Lawrence Ruck. CD had previously received information on worm activity on steep slopes that had once been ploughed near Pantlludw, Wales (see Correspondence vol. 20, letter from Amy Ruck to Horace Darwin, [20 January 1872]). See also letter to Francis Darwin, [before 1 August 1880].
6
Atty (Arthur Ashley Ruck) was a captain in the Eighth Infantry, King’s Regiment (Hart’s army list 1881). Peiwar Kotal is a mountain pass on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan; it was seized by the British in November 1878 in the second Anglo-Afghan war (Richards 1990, pp. 79–81). The ‘Doctor’ has not been identified.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12675F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12675F