To Albany Hancock   29 January [1853]

Down Farnborough Kent

Jan. 29th.—

My dear Sir

I write in a hurry to catch to days post to beg a favour & to apologise. For the former first: I have been deeply interested by Alcippe, though I have not added much to your excellent description,1 excepting perhaps on the homologies as compared with other cirripedes of the several parts.2 I am almost driven mad by its generative system,3 & I write to ask whether you have any dry shells with Alcippe you cd. send me, as I think I could get some considerable good from them: I am most anxious to examine many specimens taken at different times of year:4 I shd be most grateful if you could send me such by Post, allowing me to pay postage if heavy.

Wd. it be possible to employ for me any fishermen to get the shells now?? though specimens taken later than those you sent me, would perhaps be most useful to me: but any now wd be of greatest interest to me. My surmises are too vague & too long to tell in this note, & perhaps all a blunder, but I am dreadfully perplexed.

Now for apologies,—can you forgive me when I tell you that I have cut up all the specimens you lent me? I fear I have been unreasonable, but I have trusted to the extreme kindness you have shown me in all your correspondence. Will you forgive me?

Yours very truly | In Haste | C. Darwin

Alcippe has no relation to my burrowing S. American little cirripede.5

1
A. Hancock 1849.
2
Living Cirripedia (1854): 538–9.
3
CD was apparently beginning to suspect that Alcippe, like Ibla and Scalpellum, was not hermaphrodite. He found no external male organs in his specimens and also discovered that each had minute parasites attached to them. See Living Cirripedia (1854): 555.
5
Arthrobalanus (Cryptophialus minutus). CD had long believed that Alcippe and Arthrobalanus were allied owing to the similarity in the number and position of their cirri and in their habits (see Collected papers 1: 250 and Correspondence vol. 4, letter to Albany Hancock, [21 September 1849]). Because of this belief he had deferred examining Alcippe until he was finished with the common cirripedes. For a discussion of their differences, see Living Cirripedia (1854): 563–6.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 as compared with other cirripedes 1.4] interl
1.5 shells with Alcippe 1.6] above del ‘specimens’
2.1 Wd.] before omitted point
2.3 now] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1498,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1498