Ɛpsilon

To Alphonse de Candolle   6 July [1881]1

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

July 6th

My dear M. De Candolle

I have just received a grand volume (Vol. Tertium) of the Prodromus, which I suppose that I owe to you or your sons great kindness, & for which I am much obliged.—2

If, however, I owe the volume to any one of the authors of the several monographs, I daresay you will have before long some communication with him & will you then be so good as to express my acknowledgements. I have just returned from a 5 weeks holidays at our English Lakes, which are so beautiful that I think they must almost vie with the Swiss lakes.3 As a consequence of my holidays I have a pile of letters to answer.

Pray believe me | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the third volume of A. de Candolle and Candolle eds. 1878–96, which was published in June 1881.
2
Alphonse de Candolle and his son Casimir were editors of Monographiæ phanerogamarum: prodromi nunc continuatio nunc revisio (Monographs on the phanerogams: a continuation and revision of the Prodromus; A. de Candolle and Candolle eds. 1878–96). CD’s copies of the first three volumes are in the Darwin Library–Down. Tertium: third (Latin).
3
The Darwins returned to Down on 5 July 1881 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13236,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13236