To Samuel Birch   [12 March 1856]1

57 Queen Anne St | Cavendish Sqre.

Wednesday

My dear Sir

I will take advantage of your most kind offer2 & call on you on Friday about 11 oclock; if I do not hear to contrary I will venture to assume that this will suit you.—

Pray believe me, | Yours very truly obliged | Ch. Darwin

1
CD was in London between 10 and 14 March 1856 (see the letter to W. D. Fox, 15 March [1856]) staying with his brother, whose address he gives. He attended a council meeting of the Royal Society of London on Thursday, 13 March (Royal Society council minutes).
2
See letters to J. E. Gray, 14 January [1856], and to Samuel Birch, 6 February [1856]. Birch translated for CD passages referring to pigeons from an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia and on fowls from ancient Egyptian and Japanese sources. See Origin, 27–8, and Variation 1: 205, 230, 247. For a list of CD’s Chinese sources, see Pan 1984.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1841A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1841A