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To John Crawfurd   7 April 1861

Down Bromley Kent

April 7   61

My dear Mr. Crawfurd

Very many thanks for your note & kind present of the two pamplets1   I felt sure the one I asked about, was by you: but I did not know whether you acknowledged it. I can now refer to it as read at Oxford in 186–2   I will look to Book about Indian dates.—3 I do not believe in metempsychosis nor in Genesis—& you are growing so orthodox, that you will end your days, I believe, in believing in the Tower of Babel—4

With sincere thanks | Yours very sincerely | C Darwin

PS   I have just read & been much interested by your essay on the Horse5   I thank you much for having sent it. What a store of knowledge you possess

Copy

1
In addition to sending CD a copy of Crawfurd 1860b (see n. 5, below), Crawfurd apparently sent an abstract of Crawfurd [1860a], which was published in the Report of the 30th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Oxford, Transactions of the sections, p. 155.
2
Crawfurd [1860a]. See letter to John Crawfurd, 25 March [1861], and n. 1, above. A dash for the year was left by the copyist.
3
It is not known to what book CD refers, although it may be a work by the orientalist Horace Hayman Wilson. CD had asked Crawfurd about the dating of the ‘Institutes of Manu’ (see letter to John Crawfurd, 25 March [1861]). In Variation 1: 246, CD wrote concerning the domestication of fowls in India: In India it must have been domesticated when the Institutes of Manu were written, that is, according to Sir W. Jones 1200 B.C., but according to the later authority of Mr. H. Wilson, only 800 B.C., for the domestic fowl is forbidden. Whilst the wild is permitted to be eaten.
4
Crawfurd’s orthodox religious views were readily apparent in his review of Origin ([Crawfurd] 1859). See Correspondence vol. 7, letters to Charles Lyell, 2 December [1859], and to T. H. Huxley, [5 December 1859].
5
Crawfurd 1860b.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3114,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3114