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From John Lubbock   10 June 1858

High Elms, | Farnborough, | Kent.

10 June 58

Dear Mr. Darwin

I hope you are better. Many thanks for the Queen Bee larva & Pupa which will be very useful some day. diagram

The above two figures represent the posterior part of the subœsophageal ganglion, in the two species of Coccus whose nervous system I have examined.1 In C. persicæ? the ganglion end like a trident, whose 3 teeth pass gradually into the central stem and two lateral nerves.

In some specimens of both species I have seen the nerve a rise directly from the ganglion and not from the nerve b.2

Believe me | Yours most sincerely | J Lubbock C Darwin Esq

1
John Lubbock was preparing a paper on the digestive and nervous systems of the insect Coccus hesperidum (Lubbock 1858). His paper was read at a meeting of the Royal Society on 18 November 1858. An offprint of the paper marked by CD is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
2
CD was impressed to hear that important organs like nerves were subject to variation in their number and position. Lubbock’s information was cited in Origin, p. 46.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2284,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2284