Ɛpsilon

To J. D. Cooper   4 February 1882

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

Febr 4th. 1882.

My dear Sir

Will you be so good as to make on wood copies of the cuts enclosed in blue lines in Plate to enclosed paper.— Figs 1 & 2 to stand along side one another in upper line & Fig 3 (viz a, b, c, d, e,) in lower lines— Then, a, b, c &c, could stand rather closer together.—1

They must be fac-similes, the dark & pale purple being represented by darker & lighter shading.— The lines must all be delicate, as all are greatly magnified.2 Be so kind as to put them in hand as soon as you possibly can, as I want them for a paper soon to be read before Linnean Soc.y. Fig I & 2 & 3 might be given in type; but a & b, in fig. 2, & a, b, c, d, & e in Fig 3 must be engraved.—

Dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin

diagram

I wish the pamphlet to be returned.—3 I shall soon have another sketch to be engraved.4

1
The woodcuts were illustrations for CD’s paper ‘Action of carbonate of ammonia on chlorophyll’, which was read before the Linnean Society on 6 March 1882. The three figures appear in ibid., p. 263, and are as specified here by CD.
2
A manuscript copy of the illustrations (in ink) is in DAR 28.2: B1a; these are pasted into a draft of ‘Action of carbonate of ammonia on chlorophyll’.
3
The ‘pamphlet’ was an article by Francis Darwin, ‘The process of aggregation in the tentacles of Drosera rotundifolia’ (F. Darwin 1876a). The article included a colour plate (ibid., plate 23) showing the process of aggregation; the plate contains the figures specified by CD (see also n. 1, above).
4
CD probably refers to the illustrations for his paper ‘Action of carbonate of ammonia on roots’ (illustrations on p. 254). Pencil drawings for these are in DAR 28.2: A1a–b.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

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

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13658,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13658