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To Walter White   17 [October – November 1862?]1

Down

17th

Dear Sir

I have received Vol I of Hort. Transact. & am much obliged but it is not the right volume; I believe that I wrote Vol I second series.2 Have you not 2d series? Will you kindly pass this note on to Linn. Soc to see if they have the Second series; & if so ask them to send it by Delivery Coy on Wednesday morning to enclosed address. Will you kindly inform me whether either Soc. has this second series? for I must somehow get it— I am sorry to cause so much trouble—

In Haste | Yours faithfully | C. Darwin

Librarian Royal Soc | or | Linnean Socy.3

1
The date range is conjectured from the reference to volume 1 of the second series of the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (see n. 2, below).
2
CD’s earlier letter to White, who was the librarian of the Royal Society, has not been found. Between 7 October and 11 December 1862, CD wrote a draft section of Variation in which he discussed ‘Facts of variation of Plants’, appearing in the published form as chapters 9 and 10 (Variation 1: 305–72; see ‘Journal’ (Correspondence vol. 10, Appendix II)). In his discussion he cited on several occasions Robert Thompson’s papers on the varieties of apricot, gooseberry, and cherry, which were published in volume 1 of the second series of the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London (Thompson 1831, 1832a, and 1832b).
3
The librarian of the Linnean Society of London was Richard Kippist.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 & am much obliged] interl
1.2 Vol I] interl
1.5 series?] ‘?’ over ‘;’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3769,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3769