Ɛpsilon

To G. H. Darwin   23 July 1881

[Down.]

July 23rd 1881

In Kosmos just published (p 223) your abstract in Nature has been translated into German; & the Editor appends a note (referring to some former article in Kosmos) that, though Kant overlooked, yet that R. Mayer of Heilbronn thoroughily investigated the bearing of “Reibung” on the nebular hypothesis.—1

C.D.

Thank all the stars in Heaven, Collier has finished his picture of me & is gone..—2 He is very nice.

I am tired & cannot tell you any news.

1
Reibung: friction (German). An abstract of George’s paper ‘On the tidal friction of a planet attended by several satellites, and on the evolution of the solar system’ (G. H. Darwin 1881a) was published in Nature, 24 February 1881, pp. 389–90. A German translation of the abstract was published in Kosmos 9 (1881): 220–3. Ernst Krause’s note on p. 223 reads (in English translation): Laplace overlooked the slowing effect of tidal friction, despite the fact that Kant had discussed it in detail long before he did. More recently, Robert Mayer of Heilbronn made it the subject of in-depth investigations. See Kosmos 7: 379. (Immanuel Kant and Pierre Simon Laplace.) The reference was to a German translation of the summary of G. H. Darwin 1879 (another work on tides) published in Nature, 8 January 1880, pp. 235–7 (Kosmos 7 (1880): 379–83); in his introduction, Krause discussed the work of Kant and Mayer on the same subject.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.2 July … 1881] in left margin
1.1 just published] interl
1.3 yet that] ‘that’ interl
1.3 thoroughily] interl before del ‘throughily’
3.1 of me] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13252,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13252