Ɛpsilon

From Francis Darwin to Ernst Krause   [after 10 February 1881]1

Down | Beckenham

Dear Sir,

My father begs me to express to you his warm thanks for your kind congratulations and especially for so obligingly giving him full details about the letters.2 He is particularly glad to have this information & will preserve your letter amonst the rest of the Butlerian documents.3 My father would have written himself, had it not been that I had to answer your note to myself—4

I feel much pleased that you think my little lecture worthy of Kosmos. I am quite willing that it should be translated, and I think it would be best for me to mention it to Mr Dallas—5 The only condition which I should care to make, is that it must be clearly stated that it is meant to be strictly popular   I do not care either that the original source or date of the article be given—

I beg leave to remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Francis Darwin

Dr Ernst Krause

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Ernst Krause, 10 February 1881.
2
See letter from Ernst Krause, 10 February 1881. Krause had sent details of the letters in which CD had discussed Samuel Butler’s work when preparing Erasmus Darwin.
3
Butler had publicly charged CD and Krause with the unacknowledged use of his work on the history of evolution, and claimed that they had disparaged him.
4
On the back of the letter from Ernst Krause, 10 February 1881, Krause had written a note to Francis (verso of DAR 92: B64).
5
Krause, an editor of the German periodical Kosmos, wished to publish a German translation of an article by Francis on climbing plants. This article had appeared in Popular Science Review, edited by William Sweetland Dallas; it was based on a lecture given by Francis to the Sunday Lecture Society (F. Darwin 1880c).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13048F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13048F