To W. B. Tegetmeier   [18 June 1857]1

Dr. Lane’s Hydropathic Estabmt | Moor Park | Farnham | Surrey

Thursday

My dear Sir

I write merely to thank you for your offer crossed yellow Magpie & Helmet, but it will be of no use to me.2

I am very glad you are investigating the tail question, & I hope that you will work out the down & colour point.—3 I am really delighted that the Borneo fowls turn out in the least interesting.—4

With respect to the Runt, I fancied by your having only one that it was not valuable.— Have you any interest with Mr Bridge to supplicate him for a dead body shd. one die.5 I am much interested in Runts, as they seem to vary or differ more than other Breeds.6 It is a pity to take your young Gulliver Runt, for I shd. hope I cd. get one some time dead by chance from Mr. Gulliver.—

My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

P.S. I presume you do not care for any of the Pigeons mentioned in my last note.

1
Dated by CD’s arrival at Moor Park on Tuesday, 16 June 1857 (‘Journal’; see Correspondence vol. 6, Appendix II), and by the relationship to the letters to W. B. Tegetmeier, 18 May [1857] and 23 June [1857].
5
Mr Bridge has not been identified.
6
CD introduced the description of this breed in Variation 1: 142 with the remark: ‘Inextricable confusion reigns in the classification, affinities, and naming of Runts.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2108,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2108