Ɛpsilon

From E. R. Lankester   11 October 1881

[Mr. Lankester had written Oct. 11th, 1881, to thank Mr. Darwin for the present of the Earthworm book.1 He asks whether Darwin knows of “any experiments on the influence of sea-water on earthworms. I have assumed that it is fatal to them. But there is a littoral species (Pontodrilus of Perrier)2 found at Marseilles.” Lankester adds, “It is a great pleasure and source of pride to me to see my drawing of the earthworm’s alimentary canal figuring in your pages.”3]

incomplete

1
Lankester’s name is on CD’s presentation list for Earthworms (see Appendix IV).
2
The genus Pontodrilus had been erected in 1874 by Edmond Perrier, who renamed Lumbricus littoralis as its type species (Perrier 1874). Perrier later wrote the preface to the French edition of Earthworms (Lévêque trans. 1882, pp. ix–xxviii).
3
Lankester’s diagram of the alimentary canal of Lumbricus appeared in Earthworms, p. 18. It was taken from Lankester’s article ‘The anatomy of the earthworm’, published in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science (Lankester 1864–5).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13390F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13390F