Ɛpsilon

To John Lubbock   [29 July 1856]1

Down

Tuesday Evening

Dear Lubbock

Parslow utterly forgot to give me till within 5 minutes your note.

I am very sorry to say that I really cannot refer you to what you want: this very same point was always a trouble to me.

I am delighted to hear that you are going on well.— I have just returned from Poultry show & am very tired so no more2

Ever your’s | C. Darwin

Can you let me have back my 110’ glass as I sometimes want it. The 18’ compound I am not in a hurry for;3 it had better be packed carefully whenever returned as a jar would hurt it.—

Has not Martin Barry in last 10 years in Phil. Transact. given drawings of germinal vesicle?4 I think he must have done so.—

1
Dated by CD’s reference to the poultry show at Anerley (see n. 2, below) and to Lubbock’s microscopical investigations (see n. 4, below).
2
CD refers to the poultry show at Anerley, near Sydenham, Kent, held from Tuesday, 29 July to Friday, 1 August 1856 (see letters to W. B. Tegetmeier, [July 1856] and 14 August [1856]).
3
The reference is to lenses, probably for the Smith and Beck simple dissecting microscopes that both CD and Lubbock owned, and for their compound microscopes (see Correspondence vol. 4, letter to Richard Owen, [26 March 1848], and Appendix II, p. 404).
4
Barry 1838. Lubbock was in the process of studying the two means of reproduction in the water-flea Daphnia, a freshwater crustacean, to see whether the common eggs destined to develop without fertilisation (the agamic ova) were morphologically different from the so-called ‘ephippial’ eggs (Lubbock 1857). See letter to John Lubbock, 27 October [1856].

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 same] over illeg
6.1 Martin] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1620,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1620