To J. D. Dana   27 September [1853]

Down Bromley Kent

Sept. 27th.—

My dear Sir

Pray forgive my troubling you: but my neighbour Mr J. Lubbock has got your work on Crustacea (as yet without the Plates) & has lent it me for a fortnight to look over;1 and I have experienced such great interest in many parts & have found it so suggestive towards my own Cirripedial work, that I cannot resist expressing my thanks & admiration. The Geographical discussion struck me as eminently good.2 The size of the work, & the necessary labour bestowed on it, is really surprising: why, if you had done nothing else whatever, it would have been a magnum opus for life.

Forgive my presuming to estimate your labours, but when I think that this work has followed your Corals & your Geology,3 I am really lost in astonishment at what you have done in mere labour. And then, besides the labour, so much originality in all three works! I only hope that your health has withstood such labour; it frightens me to think of it.—

You will have seen my friend & neighbour, Mr Lubbock has been working a little on the lower Crustacea:4 he is a remarkably nice young man, only a little above 18 years old:—if you can ever give him a little encouragement it would really be a good service, for he has great zeal, & for so young, I shd. hope, has done well; & if he can resist his future career of great wealth, business & rank, may do good work in Natural History.

I hope myself to go to press in a month’s time with my last vol. on the Cirripedia: I have got 30 Plates engraved, & shall be very glad to have finished it.—5

Pray do not think for one moment of answering this for there is nothing to answer in it: but excuse my troubling you & believe me with the highest respect. | Yours sincerely | C. Darwin

1
Dana 1852–3; the Atlas did not appear until 1855. See letter to J. D. Dana, 25 November [1852], in which CD stated his intention to borrow John Lubbock’s copy. In his reading notebook (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV, 128: 6), CD recorded on 20 September 1853 having completed ‘Dana’s Crustacea’.
2
The last section of part two of Dana 1852–3 is entitled ‘On the geographical distribution of Crustacea’. This was also printed as a separate volume in 1853. Unknown to CD, Dana had already sent him a copy of this work (Dana 1853), which arrived in Down by 10 October (letter to J. D. Dana, 10 October [1853]). This copy of Dana 1853, annotated by CD, is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
3
Dana prepared three reports for the United States Exploring Expedition, 1838–42: Zoophytes (1848), which included corals; Geology (1849), including his observations on the formation of coral reefs and islands; and the monograph on Crustacea (1852–3).
4
John Lubbock published a series of papers in 1853 on new genera and sub-genera of the Calanidae (see letter to J. D. Dana, 25 November [1852], n. 10).
5
CD refers to Living Cirripedia (1854), which contains thirty plates. Proofs were not ready until February 1854 (‘Journal’; Correspondence vol. 5, Appendix I). CD was also preparing Fossil Cirripedia (1854).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.7 done] interl
3.1 has been] interl above del ‘—’
3.4 he has] ‘has’ above del illeg

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1533,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1533