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To Edward Cresy   8 January [1862 or 1868]1

Down, | Bromley, | Kent, S.E.

Jan. 8th.

Dear Cresy,

I am much obliged to you for Theophrastas, though I did not find much which concerned me.2 I will return it to-night by our Carrier, and I write this to notify the same to you. Many thanks, also, for the date of Boll’s work3 and for other Titles.

Yours very sincerely, | Ch. Darwin.

Copy

1
The years are conjectured from the form of the address printed on the stationery and by the reference to returning a book ‘to-night by our Carrier’. CD used this form of printed address between 1861 and 1869 (Carroll ed. 1976, p. xiii). The Down parcel carrier, George Snow, departed for London every Wednesday night; between 1861 and 1869, the only Wednesdays that fell on 8 January were in 1862 and 1868.
2
The reference is probably to one of the botanical works of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who is mentioned in Variation 2: 308 in a citation from A. de Candolle 1855.
3
The reference may be to Ernst Friedrich August Boll; the work has not been identified.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13788,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13788