Ɛpsilon

To Robert Fitch   [13? April 1850]1

Down Farnborough Kent

Saturday

My dear Sir

I send one line to say that I have got back some of your specimens safe & drawn, & taken all the others to Mr. Sowerby.—2 I am ready to go to press,3 & therefore you may rely on it, I shall urge Mr Sowerby on in his Drawings, but he has one longish job in Hand.—4

Mr Sowerby, took the liberty, of clearing, a little bit of chalk away from your best specimen, which he ought not to have done, but he has improved the specimen.— In one corner of it, he has displayed a little Terebratula or Crania, which he says is a new species to him!—

I wish with all my heart that my M.S. was printed & done with, for I have become at last tired of the fossil species.—5

This obviously requires no answer.—

Yours sincerely | & | obliged | C. Darwin

1
Dated by CD’s reference to having visited James de Carle Sowerby (see letter to J. de C. Sowerby, [13 April 1850]).
2
See letter to James de Carle Sowerby, [13 April 1850].
3
CD experienced protracted delays with the preparation of the plates for Fossil Cirripedia and did not actually go to press with his first volume for the Palaeontographical Society until early 1851.
4
Possibly a reference to CD’s foreign species of barnacles, which were given to James de Carle Sowerby (see letter to J. de C. Sowerby, 4 May [1850]).
5
CD ‘commenced systematic Sessilia’ on 28 April 1850, as recorded in his ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix I).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.3 corner] above del ‘quarter’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1315,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1315