Ɛpsilon

To J. B. Innes   15 September 1881

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

Sept. 15th 1881

My dear Innes

The case of the bees not entering the bottles seems very curious, & I will mention it to Lubbock, who is by far the best judge & observer of the minds of insects now living in the world.1 Wasps have been as extraordinarily rare here, as they appear to have been common with you.— The criticism about the hexagons made by queen wasps is a very good one:2 I well remember thinking over this case, & how I wriggled out of the difficulty, I cannot remember. I do not believe that I was so dishonest as not to notice it: at least if I did do so, it was momentary forgetfulness, as I collected wasps & hornets’ nests & studied the different kinds of nests in the B. Museum, & knew well that the Queen commenced her comb, all by herself.—3 There is really not a scrap of news to tell you. Poor Mrs Parslow is dead & she is a great loss to the village, as she was wonderfully kind to any sick & poor person.—4

I go on working in my usual manner & do what I can. I have occasionally attended for many years to the habits of worms, & next month a little book on them by me will be published, & as some parts may possibly interest you (for you ought to have been a regular naturalist) I will send you a copy as soon as it is published.—5

My brother, Erasmus, whom you may in old times have seen here, has lately died; & I am glad to say that his last illness was very short & without any severe suffering.6

Farewell my dear Innes | yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I see that I have forgotten to take black-edged paper.

1
See letter from J. B. Innes, 14 September 1881. John Lubbock, CD’s neighbour, had published articles on the intelligence of bees and wasps in the 1870s, and in 1888 he published The senses, instincts, and intelligence of animals, with special reference to insects (Lubbock 1874–7 and Lubbock 1888).
2
CD had attributed the hexagonal shape of bees’ cells to the communal building process in a beehive (Origin, pp. 224–35). Innes based his criticism on the supposition that since only queen wasps survived the winter they built their nests alone (see letter from J. B. Innes, 14 September 1881 and n. 1).
3
George Robert Waterhouse of the British Museum had sent CD information on wasps’ cells in 1858 (see Correspondence vol. 7, letter from G. R. Waterhouse, 17 April 1858).
4
Eliza Parslow was the wife of Joseph Parslow, who had been the Darwins’ butler until 1875. The Parslows lived in Down village.
5
Earthworms was published on 10 October 1881 (Freeman 1977); Innes’s name is on CD’s presentation list (see Appendix IV).
6
Erasmus Alvey Darwin had died on 26 August 1881.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.3 been as] ‘as’ over illeg
1.4 made] after del ‘making’
1.5 wriggled] after del ‘got’
1.8 of nests] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13339,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13339