To G. R. Waterhouse   8 July [1855]

Down Farnborough Kent

July 8th

My dear Waterhouse

Two of my Boys1 are become ardent Lepidopterists, & I want much to know whether there is any systematic work on Lepidoptera, tolerably easy. I really shd. be very much obliged if you could inform me. I look at it as fine practice for the intellect making out the names from descriptions, & but idle work, mere collecting or comparing with mere figures.— I have Stephens work,2 but he uses such dreadfully hard words; & there is no Synopsis. Westwood in his “Modern Classification”3 has a Synopsis at end, but there it is most extraordinary but he gives no characters for the Families & Sub-families, only generic descriptions.—

John Lubbock has lent me Humphreys & Westwoods magnificent work,4 but here again there is nothing like a Synopsis; & it would take hours to go dipping through the volume to find the several Families, & pick out the essential characters out of the diffuse descriptions. Does a Book such as I want, exist on British Lepidoptera?

How strange if such does not exist. Will you be so kind as to illuminate me.—

Yours most truly | C. Darwin

For the Butterflies Stephens does pretty well, as he gives some sort of a Synopsis; but what wretched latinised English he does use.5

Endorsement: ‘C. Darwin July 8. 55’

1
William, aged 15, and George, aged 10. See letter to W. E. Darwin, [25 April 1855].
2
Stephens 1829. A lightly annotated copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL. CD used this catalogue when he was an enthusiastic collector during his undergraduate years at Cambridge.
3
Westwood 1839–40. CD’s annotated copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
4
Westwood 1841, arranged and illustrated by Henry Noel Humphreys.
5
From CD’s comments it is probable that he refers to Stephens 1828–46, pt 2, Haustellata. Volume four, which deals with the Lepidoptera, has a brief synopsis of the group on pp. 398–402.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 go] ‘g’ over ‘d’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1713,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1713