Ɛpsilon

From G. J. Romanes   4 September [1881]1

Garvock, Bridge of Earn, Perthshire:

September 4.

My dear Mr. Darwin,—

I hasten to relieve your mind about writing on vivisection, as I am sure that none of the physiologists would desire you to do so if you feel it a bother.2 After all, there are plenty of other men to do the writing, and if some of them quote the marked sentences in your letter (which I return), with the statement that you still adhere to them, the chief thing will be done—viz. showing again and emphatically on which side you are.3

It is not intended to call the article a ‘Symposium.’ I only used this word to show that they are to be of the same composite kind as those which the ‘Nineteenth Century’ previously published under this designation.4

Your letter gives me the first news of your brother’s death.5 I remember very well seeing him one day when I called on you at his house. It must make you very sad, and I am sorry to have written you at such a time.

I have already sent in a short review of Roux’s book, but should like to see about the bees in ‘Kosmos.’6 I am trying some experiments with bees here on way-finding; but, contrary to my expectations, I find that most bees, when marked and liberated at one hundred yards from their hive, do not get back for a long time. This fact makes it more difficult to test their mode of way-finding, as the faculty (whatever it is) does not seem to be certain.7

Many thanks for sending me the book on Worms so early.8 As yet I have only had time to look at the table of contents, which seems most interesting.

Lockyer is staying here just now, and has given me the proofs of his book. It seems to me that he has quite carried the position as to the elements being products of development.9

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881.
2
CD had declined Romanes’s invitation to contribute to a ‘symposium-like series of short essays’ on vivisection that would be published in the monthly magazine Nineteenth Century (letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881).
3
CD had sent Romanes a copy of the letter he had written in defence of vivisection that was published in The Times in April (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881 and n. 2).
4
CD had thought the term ‘symposium’ might be regarded as in bad taste when dealing with a sensitive topic like vivisection since its original meaning was a drinking party (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881 and n. 3).
6
CD had told Romanes about a review of Wilhelm Roux’s book as well as an article on bees by Hermann Müller in the latest issue of Kosmos (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881 and nn. 6 and 7). Romanes’s review of Roux 1881 appeared in Nature, 29 September 1881, pp. 505–6.
7
Romanes was working on animal intelligence; he discussed bees and wasps in relation to way-finding in his book on the subject (G. J. Romanes 1882, pp. 181–2).
8
CD had asked his printers to send the pages of Earthworms to Romanes in advance of its publication (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 2 September 1881).
9
Norman Lockyer, who believed that inorganic evolution proceeded alongside organic evolution, published no books between 1878 and 1887. The spectroscopic work he undertook to confirm his controversial view that each element had a variable spectrum because atoms could be dissociated into simpler elements under extreme heat was presented in his book The chemistry of the sun (Lockyer 1887), but this was not published until 1887, making it unclear whether the proofs mentioned by Romanes were a very early version of this book. It is possible that Lockyer showed Romanes pages of his series of lectures ‘Solar physics: chemistry of the sun’, which had been published in Nature in July and August 1881 (Lockyer 1881). In his last lecture, Lockyer discussed the new theory of chemical evolution (Nature, 25 August 1881, pp. 394–9).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13317,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13317