To H. G. Bronn   14 February [1860]1

Down Bromley Kent.

Feb. 14th

My dear & much honoured Sir

I thank you cordially for your extreme kindness in superintending the Translation. I have mentioned this to some eminent scientific men, & they all agree that you have done a noble & generous service. If I am proved quite wrong, yet I comfort myself in thinking that my Book may do some good; as truth can only be known by rising victorious from every attack. I thank you, also, much for the Review, & for the kind manner in which you speak of me.—2 I send with this letter some corrections & additions to M. Scheweitzerbart & a short Historical Preface.3 I am not much acquainted with German Authors, as I read German very slowly; therefore I do not know whether any Germans have advocated similar views with mine; if they have, would you do me the favour to insert a foot=note to the Preface?4 M. Scheweitzerbart has now the Reprint ready for a Translator to begin.— Several scientific men have thought the term “Natural Selection” good, because its meaning is not obvious, & each man could not put on it his own interpretation, & because it at once connects Variation under domestication & nature.— Is there any analogous term used by German Breeders of animals?— “Adelung”,—ennobling—would perhaps be too metaphorical. It is folly in me, but I cannot help doubting, whether “Wahl der Lebens-weise” expresses my notion.— It leaves the impression on my mind of the Lamarckian doctrine (which I reject) of habits of life being all-important. Man has altered & thus improved the English Race-Horse by selecting successive fleeter individuals; & I believe, owing to the struggle for existence, that similar slight variations in a wild Horse, if advantageous to it, would be selected or preserved by Nature: Hence Natural Selection.

But I apologise for troubling you with these remarks on the importance of choosing good German terms for “natural selection.”5

With my heart-felt thanks & with sincere respect | I remain Dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Charles Darwin.

I am very much obliged for your “Stuffengang &c”, which I am now reading:6 I wish I knew what was the authority for a Batrachian in the New Hebrides.—7

1
Dated by the reference to the German translation of Origin.
2
Bronn 1860a. There is a copy of the review in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
3
Christian Friedrich Schweizerbart, owner of the publishing firm E. Schweizerbart of Stuttgart, was the publisher of the German edition of Origin (see letter to H. G. Bronn, 4 February [1860]). The historical preface that CD had composed for the authorised American edition of Origin (see Correspondence vol.8, Appendix IV) was also published in the German edition of 1860. It was subsequently expanded and included in the third English edition.
4
Bronn did not follow CD’s suggestion, although he did include a footnote to the discussion of Étienne Geoffroy St Hilaire’s views on species (Bronn trans. 1860, p. 2 n.): Bekanntlich kam er in der Akademie mehrmals zu heftigen Auftritten noch mit Cuvier, welcher die Beständigkeit der Species gegen ihn vertheidigte. D. Übers. [It is well known that on several occasions in the academy he had violent clashes with Cuvier, who defended against him the view of the constancy of species. The translator.] In the historical sketch included in Origin 3d ed., CD cited the German naturalists Hermann Schaaffhausen, Karl Ernst von Baer, and Karl Friedrich Burdach as having expressed views on species change. In a note (p. xviii), he added to these Franz Unger, Joseph Wilhelm Eduard d’Alton, and Lorenz Oken on the basis of references given in Bronn 1858b.
5
In his review of Origin, Bronn had referred to natural selection as ‘Wahl der Lebens-Weise’ (Bronn 1860a, p. 112). The term Bronn used in his translation was ‘natürliche Züchtung’.
6
Bronn 1860b. There are two copies in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL, one of which is annotated.
7
Bronn 1860b, p. 13 n. According to CD’s views on the colonisation of oceanic islands, it would be very difficult for frogs or their eggs, which are damaged by salt-water, to reach isolated areas such as the New Hebrides.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.00 very] interl
1.00 foot=note] ‘foot’ interl
1.00 ready … begin 1.00] interl
1.00 altered] above del ‘selected’
1.00 preserved] after del ‘improQQQQ’
2.00 German] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2698,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2698