Ɛpsilon

To Hyacinth Hooker   10 September [1881]1

Down Beckenham

Sept. 10th

My dear Lady Hooker.

Very many thanks for the newspaper, which has amused us & perplexes us who the author could have been. What difficult French the gentleman writes & some of the expressions no one in this house could translate.—2

I am very glad that York answered so brilliantly.—3

Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

The paper shall be forwarded tomorrow—

1
The year is established by the mourning border (Erasmus Alvey Darwin had died on 26 August 1881) and the reference to York (see n. 3, below).
2
Neither the newspaper nor the subject of the article has been identified.
3
Joseph Dalton Hooker had served as president of the Geography section at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting in York between 31 August and 7 September 1881 (Report of the 51st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at York (1881), Transactions of the sections, pp. 727–38).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13327,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13327