Ɛpsilon

To Patrick Geddes   9 December 1881

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

Decr 9 1881

Dear Sir

You were so kind as to send me a few days ago your article in the Encyclop. Brit.— I have now looked through it, & it seems to me wonderfully well done, & you have managed to give in the space a surprising amount of information.1

Permit me to add that I read with admiration your researches on the presence of chlorophyll in the animal kingdom.—2

I remain | Dear Sir, Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

1
Geddes’s article ‘Insectivorous plants’ was published in Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB 9th ed. 13: 134–40).
2
Geddes’s paper ‘Observations on the physiology and histology of Convoluta Schultzii’ (Geddes 1879) was read on 27 March 1879 and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Convoluta schultzii (a synonym of Symsagittifera schultzei) is a green planarian (turbellarian) worm; Geddes had compared it to insectivorous plants like Drosera, calling it a ‘vegetating animal’ and the ‘precise reciprocal’ of insectivorous plants, because he had discovered chlorophyll in its body (ibid., p. 453).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13542,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13542