Ɛpsilon

To Marianne North   2 August 1881

Down, Beckingham, Kent.

2d August 1881.

My dear Miss North,—

I am much obliged for the “Australian Sheep,” which is very curious. If I had seen it from a yard’s distance lying on a table, I would have wagered that it was a coral of the genus Porites.1

I am so glad that I have seen your Australian pictures, and it was extremely kind of you to bring them here. To the present time I am often able to call up with considerable vividness scenes in various countries which I have seen, and it is no small pleasure; but my mind in this respect must be a mere barren waste compared with your mind.—2

I remain, dear Miss North, yours, truly obliged, | Charles Darwin.

1
Raoulia eximia (the vegetable sheep) is a species in the family Asteraceae. It is native to New Zealand and has dense buds that form woolly balls (see Hooker 1864–7, 1: 149, and North 1894, 2: 185, 216). The plant appears in North’s painting, New Zealand flowers and fruit (Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, North gallery, painting 721; see also this volume, frontispiece). Porites is a genus of stony coral.
2
North had stayed at Down from 16 to 18 July 1881 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)). She described her visit with CD as follows: ‘He sat on the grass under a shady tree, and talked deliciously on every subject to us all for hours together, or turned over and over again the collection of Australian paintings I brought down for him to see, showing in a few words how much more he knew about the subjects than any one of us, myself included, though I had seen them and he had not’ (North 1894, 2: 215). CD had spent several weeks in Australia on the Beagle voyage (see Journal of researches).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13269A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13269A