Ɛpsilon

To Richard Kippist?1   11 December [1860]2

Down Bromley Kent

Dec. 11th.

Dear Sir

I will return the two vols. in Hand on Thursday morning, & will you be so kind as to have the following Books ready for me.—

Mém du Mus. d’Hist. Nat. Tom 8.3

Edinburg. Phil. Journal XIV (published about 35 years ago)4

Reports of Brit. Assoc. for the year, when Prof. Owen was President;5 it is the volume containing his address which I wish to see.—   Will you kindly look for volume.—

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | C. Darwin

1
The recipient is suggested by the reference in the letter to J. D. Hooker, 26 November [1860], to Kippist’s writing to CD about a book that CD wished to borrow from the library of the Linnean Society. Kippist was librarian to the society.
2
The year is given by the reference to articles CD needed for the preparation of the third edition of Origin (see nn. 4 and 5, below).
3
It is not clear which paper in this volume of the Mémoires du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle CD wished to read. None of them is cited in the third edition of Origin or in Variation. CD may possibly have consulted a paper by Adolphe Théodore Brongniart on the classification and distribution of fossil plants (Brongniart 1822) or one by René Joachim Henri Dutrochet on the crossing of plants (Dutrochet 1822).
4
This volume of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal contained an article by the zoologist Robert Edmond Grant, who had befriended CD during his time at Edinburgh University, that referred to Grant’s belief in transmutation (Grant 1826). The paper is cited in the ‘Historical sketch’ included in the third edition of Origin, p. xiv: In 1826, Professor Grant, in the concluding paragraph in his well-known paper (Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. xiv. p. 283) on the Spongilla, clearly declares his belief that species are descended from other species, and that they become improved in the course of modification. This passage had not appeared in the first version of the historical sketch published in the revised American and German editions of Origin. For CD’s recollection of learning about Grant’s transformist views, see Autobiography, p. 49.
5
Richard Owen was president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1858. CD cited his presidential address (R. Owen 1858) in the historical sketch in the third edition of Origin, pp. xvi–xvii, stating that Owen had addressed the question of species change in speaking about ‘the axiom of the continuous operation of creative power, or of the ordained becoming of living things.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3016,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3016