Ɛpsilon

To G. J. Romanes   29 March [1882]1

My dear Romanes.

I have accidentally stumbled on the paper by the Baron de Villa Franca on apparent grafting of sugar-canes, which he sent me some years ago.—2 As your power of work & perseverance seem to be indomitable, perhaps the M.S wd be worth glancing over, & the reference to this former communication might be more precise. in the paper which you have so kindly drawn up.—3

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Down. March 29th—

1
The year is established by a note in Romanes’s hand, ‘My last letter from Darwin’.
2
A paper by Ignacio Francisco Silveira da Motta, baron de Vila Franca, on the culture and propagation of sugar cane had been sent to CD for comment in 1880 (see Correspondence vol. 28, letter from Arthur de Souza Corrêa, 20 October 1880).
3
Romanes was preparing a paper based on documents received by CD in December 1881 (see letter to G. J. Romanes, 3 January [1882] and n. 2). CD communicated baron de Vila Franca’s work on new varieties of sugar cane to the Linnean Society on 6 April 1882; the paper was read on 4 May 1882, but not published (Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (1880–2): 30–1; Linnean Society, SP register, reference 2371). The paper was also mentioned in Journal of Botany: British and Foreign 20 (1882): 192. CD’s draft of his and Romanes’s commentary on the paper is in DAR 207: 4.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 in] over ‘—’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13748F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13748F