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From Arthur de Souza Corrêa   20 October 1880

Brazilian Legation. | London | 2a. Granville Place | W.

20th. October 1880

Sir,

The Baron de Villa Franca, a great proprietor and cultivator in Brazil, has written the enclosed short memorial in French on the subject of culture and propagation of Sugar Cane, and his great ambition is to procure your appreciation of his facts and opinion of his deduction.1 For that purpose he has asked me to submit his work to you. Should you be disposed to gratify him by perusing it and giving your opinion upon its merits, I would be extremely obliged for your kindness.2

The only excuse I can make for this intrusion on you is the anxiety of my—countryman to submit his investigations to the highest scientific authority and my own inability to ascertain how to approach you.

Should my application be inadmissible, I will ask you to regard it as another consequence of that fame which has made your name as renowned in the new as in the old world.

Believe me with profound respect | Your faithful servant | A. de Souza Corréa | Secretary of the Brazilian Legation.

Chas. Darwin Esqre. M.A, F.R.S.

1
Ignacio Francisco Silveira da Motta, baron de Vila Franca, was a Brazilian politician and farmer.
2
The baron de Vila Franca’s memorial on the culture of sugar cane has not been found. After further correspondence in 1881 and 1882, CD and George John Romanes communicated baron de Vila Franca’s work on new varieties of sugar cane to the Linnean Society on 6 April 1882; the paper was read on 4 May 1882, but not published (Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (1880–2): 30–1; Linnean Society, SP register, reference 2371). The paper was also mentioned in Journal of Botany: British and Foreign 20 (1882): 192. CD’s draft of his and Romanes’s commentary on the paper is in DAR 207.4.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12767,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12767