Ɛpsilon

From H. N. Moseley   5 April 1882

33 Beaumont St | Oxford.

April 5— 82.

Dear Mr Darwin

As a member of the Rolleston Memorial Committee I am asked to write to you and ask whether if you feel inclined to subscribe to the Fund you will kindly send your subscription shortly to the Treasurer. E. Chapman Esq. Frewen Hall Oxford.1

A meeting will be held in May at the College of Physicians to settle what form the Memorial shall take. The Committee will recommend that the interest of the money subscribed shall be given as a prize once every two years for the best original memoir on any biological subject produced by any member of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge who has not exceeded a certain number of terms from matriculation. Equivalent to about four years after the usual degree.2

I hope this scheme may meet your approbation. No subject will be set for the prize   Such an arrangement as far as I know never produces any good result.

The prize is to be withheld if no work of real importance is forthcoming but I do not think there is much chance of such a mishap now.

With kind regards. | yours truly | H. N. Moseley.

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Augt 13th | — 17th.’3 pencil
1
The fund to memorialise George Rolleston had been established soon after his death in June 1881. Edward Chapman was curator of the Oxford University botanic garden and curator of the Hope Collection in the University Museum.
2
By June 1882, the fund amounted to £1100; it was used to establish the Rolleston prize of £70, which was awarded every two years to the student who produced the best memoir on any aspect of animal and vegetable morphology, physiology and pathology, or anthropology (Nature, 8 June 1882, p. 135).
3
CD’s annotations are notes for his reply to Moseley. The dates relate to the cheque CD remembered having sent when the fund was first proposed (see letter to H. N. Moseley, 7 April 1882 and n. 2).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13759,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13759