To V. O. Kovalevsky   22 February [1870]1

Down. | Beckenham. | Kent. S.E.

Feb. 22d

My dear Sir

I received a very large box full of beautiful tea from Russia yesterday, & no doubt from you.— It is very kind of you, but you are really too magnificent. I suppose you are at Heidelberg, but I have always regretted, since your visit here,2 that I forgot to ask you to […]

[…] As for myself—my life is as regular & monotonous as a clock. I make sure, but wofully slow progress, with my new book, & do not yet in the least know when I shall go to press.3 I doubt whether I shall be ready before the end of the year […]

[…] I saw lately an allusion to some paper confirming his remarkable discovery about the chorda dorsalis in the lance of Ascidia [… ]4

incomplete5

1
The year is established by the reference to Heidelberg; see letter from V. O. Kovalevsky, 20 February [1870] and n. 1.
2
Kovalevsky visited Down from 30 September to 1 October 1869 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).
3
Descent was published at the beginning of 1871.
4
CD refers to Kovalevsky’s brother, Alexander Onufrievich Kovalevsky, and to A. Kovalevsky 1866. There is a heavily annotated copy of A. O. Kovalevsky’s article in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. The paper confirming Kovalevsky’s discovery was Kupffer 1870. CD discussed the findings in Descent 1: 205. Chorda dorsalis: the notochord, a cartilaginous rod forming the primitive basis of the spinal column (OED).
5
The first page of the letter, down to ‘ask you to’, is transcribed from a facsimile; the rest is from the dealers’ transcriptions. The original letter is complete and is described in the sale catalogue as being four pages long.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Beckenham] before del ‘Bromley’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13060,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13060