Ɛpsilon

To W. B. Tegetmeier   5 March [1859]1

Down Bromley Kent

March 5th

My dear Sir

The fowls arrived quite hearty yesterday & are very pretty.— I am now sufficiently stocked, thanks to your great kindness. diag Former Fowls.— 13

Hamburgh 10.6

Basket 1

—–

£ 1.4.6ramme which I now enclose.—2

You shall hear result of experiment.—3

Mr K. Bruce told me he would join the Bee Socy.—4 & I will remind him whenever I see him.

With my renewed thanks, pray believe me | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

When you see Mr Weir do not forget to ask about wing-bars &c in silver Barbs.—5

1
Dated by an entry in CD’s Account book (Down House MS) recording a payment to Tegetmeier for the amount mentioned in the letter (see n. 2, below).
2
CD recorded a payment of £1 4s. 6d. for ‘Tegetmeier Poultry’ on 2 March 1859 in his Account book (Down House MS).
3
The experiment was to ascertain whether the colour of the ancestral Gallus bankiva could be obtained by crossing existing breeds of domestic poultry. The results were described in Variation 1: 240–3.
5
CD had been anxious to question Harrison William Weir about the colouring of pigeons for some time. See letters to W. B. Tegetmeier, 2 October [1858] and 27 [November 1858]. Black wing-bars are characteristic of the wild, ancestral pigeon, Columba livia, which is slate-blue in colour. CD had been informed that wing-bars appear almost without exception in all blue domestic breeds, but he had not yet recorded a case among barbs.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 1] over ‘4’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2423,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2423