Ɛpsilon

To Raphael Meldola   12 March 1881

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

March 12th 1881.

Dear Mr. Meldola

It is very kind of you to offer to send me the book, but I feel sure that it could not have belonged to my grandfather.—1 My eldest brothers name is Erasmus & he attended to chemistry when young, & I suppose that the “Annals of Philosophy” was left at my Father’s house & sold with the Library which belonged to my sisters.—2

I will look to the few words of Preface to Weismann, whenever I receive a proof.—3

with many thanks— | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
No letter from Meldola offering to send a book has been found. CD’s grandfather was Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802).
2
Erasmus Alvey Darwin had attended chemistry lectures while a student at Cambridge; he built a small laboratory in the tool house in the garden of the family home at Shrewsbury, and he and CD performed experiments there (see Correspondence vol. 1, letter from E. A. Darwin, 14 November 1822 and n. 1). CD’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, had built his house, The Mount, Shrewsbury, around 1800 (Browne 1995, pp. 9–10). His unmarried daughters at the time of his death were Susan Elizabeth Darwin and Catherine Darwin. After Susan died in 1866, the house and contents were sold (see Correspondence vol. 15, letter from Salt & Sons, 17 July 1867). The journal Annals of Philosophy was published from 1813 until 1827, when it merged with the Philosophical Magazine; the name changed to the Philosophical Magazine: or Annals of Chemistry, Mathematics, Astronomy, Natural History, and General Science.
3
CD wrote a short ‘Prefatory notice’ to Studies in the theory of descent (Weismann 1880–2, pp. v–vi), Meldola’s translation of August Weismann’s Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie (Weismann 1875–6).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

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

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13093,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13093