Ɛpsilon

To A. W. Howitt   [before 30 November 1880]1

[I also received a letter from Charles Darwin to whom I sent a copy from myself as he some seven years ago suggested to me to place on record all I could gather about the blacks.2 He writes me that after glancing through the book it seemed to him so important in our “new views and facts” that he at once sent it to his neighbour Mr McLennan who although in terribly bad health is striving to complete a book before he dies.3 When Mr Darwin gets the book back he says he shall read it again very carefully.]

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from J. F. McLennan, 30 November 1880.
2
The text is from a letter from Howitt to Lorimer Fison, 10 January 1881. In his letter to Howitt of [September 1874] (Correspondence vol. 22), CD had suggested that Howitt should write a book on the mental powers and beliefs of Australian aborigines. Howitt had sent Kamilaroi and Kurnai (Fison and Howitt 1880).
3
John Ferguson McLennan accepted CD’s offer to lend him Fison and Howitt 1880; see letter from J. F. McLennan, 30 November 1880. McLennan died in 1881. He lived at Hayes Common, Kent, three and a half miles from Down (ODNB); his work on the origin of patriarchal family structures was published posthumously (McLennan 1885).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12874F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12874F