Ɛpsilon

To William Preyer   27 November 1880

[Down.]

Nov: 27th. 1880.

My dear Sir

It will give me much pleasure to send you a copy of my book, and I have directed Mr. Murray to send you one; but there may be a little delay, as I heard this morning that every copy was sold; but the type is yet up and more copies will be printed off directly.— I fear my methods will not be applicable to embryos.1

I enclose copies of the articles to which, I suppose, you refer, and which I discovered after a long search.— As I have no other copy I should be obliged if you would return them. I never wrote in the Zoologist, so I suppose something was copied out of Nature.2

Your book has not yet arrived, but probably will to-morrow, as they are often delayed a day or two by our Post.3 I am very much obliged to you for your kindness in having sent it to me.

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Copy

1
Preyer had asked CD to send him a copy of Movement in plants and hoped that some of the methods in it might be relevant to his studies of animal embryos; see letter from William Preyer, 25 November 1880. For the news that CD’s publisher, John Murray, was printing off more copies of Movement in plants, see the letter from R. F. Cooke, 26 November 1880.
3
See letter from William Preyer, 25 November 1880 and n. 3; Preyer had sent Preyer 1880; a copy is the Darwin Library–Down.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12867,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12867