Ɛpsilon

To Richard Kippist1   7 January [1861]2

Down Bromley Kent

Jan 7.

Dear Sir

[Will] you be so good as to have ready for me tomorrow morning (Tuesday) Memoires presentes par Divers Savan a l’Acad. R. des Sciences: Paris.— Tom. IV.3

I hope to call for it myself; if I fail I will send Carrier for it on Thursday.—4

Yours very faithfully | C. Darwin

1
Richard Kippist was the librarian of the Linnean Society of London, from which CD often borrowed scientific works.
2
The year is based on the 1859 watermark of the stationery and by 7 January falling on a Monday in 1861.
3
It is not clear which paper CD wished to consult in the Mémoires présentés par divers Savans ‘a l’Académie Royale des Sciences de l’Institut de France. Sciences mathématiques et physiques 4 (1833). This volume contains a paper on the natural history of insects by Léon Dufour (Dufour 1833), but it is not a work that CD ever seems to have cited. It is possible, that CD meant to write ‘VI’ instead of ‘IV’. Volume 6 of this journal contains a paper by François Désiré Roulin (Roulin 1835) that CD cited a number of times in chapter 3 of Variation, which he prepared in the first three months of 1861 (see ‘Journal’; Appendix II).
4
There is no record that CD went to London on 8 January 1861. A weekly carrier service operated between Down and London on Thursdays (Post Office directory of the six home counties 1862).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3044,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3044