Ɛpsilon

To T. M. Hocken   21 February 1881

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | (Railway Station | Orpington S.E.R.)

Dear Sir

I received this morning your letter of Decr 30th & the Address, which has deeply gratified me.1 I hope that you will express to the Council of the Otago Institution my gratitude for the very great & unusual honour thus conferred on me.— This honour is peculiarly gratifying to me, as coming from New Zealand, the wonderful progress of which has interested me greatly.— I have read every one of the volumes of the New Zealand Institute from the first, as each appeared successively, & always with admiration at the success & zeal with which Science is followed in a Country, destined, as I believe, Great Britain of the Southern hemisphere.—2

I beg leave to return to you personally my sincere thanks for your very kind & courteous letter, & I remain, Dear Sir

Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

To | T. M. Hocken, Esq | President of the Otago Institute

1
No letter from Hocken dated 30 December 1880 has been found. The address was probably the testimonial from the Council of the Otago Institute for the Arts and Sciences, dated 1 October 1880 (Correspondence vol. 28, Appendix III). This testimonial, signed by Hocken and other members of the Otago Institute, congratulating CD on the twenty-first anniversary of the publication of Origin, was published in Nature, 24 February 1881, pp. 393–4, under the title ‘Honour to Mr. Darwin’.
2
The New Zealand Institute, established in 1867, was an umbrella organisation that brought together various scientific societies in New Zealand, including the Otago Institute from its founding in 1869. See ‘History of the Otago Institute for the Arts and Sciences’, pp. 4–5 (Royal Society Te Apārangi, https://royalsociety.org.nz/assets/documents/Otago-History-Full.pdf (accessed 20 September 2019)). The Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute were published annually from 1869.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13059,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13059