To George Henry Turnbull   [16? February 1863]1

Down

Monday

My dear Sir

My little hot-house is finished & you must allow me once again to thank you sincerely for allowing Horwood to superintend its erection.2 Without his aid I should never have had spirit to undertake it;—and if I had should probably have made a mess of it.— It will not only be an amusement to me, but will enable me to try many little experiments, which otherwise would have been impossible.—3

With sincere thanks | My dear Sir | Yours sincerely & obliged | Ch. Darwin

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letters to J. D. Hooker, 30 January [1863] and 15 February [1863], and by reference to the payment of £4 5s. to John Horwood, on 16 February 1863 (see n. 2, below); in 1863, 16 February was a Monday.
2
Horwood was Turnbull’s gardener at The Rookery, Down, Kent. Payments to Horwood, ‘for Hot-house’, are detailed in CD’s Account book–cash accounts (Down House MS). CD spent a total of £85 11s. 1d. constructing and equipping the hothouse in 1863 (see also Appendix VI).
3
An indication of the plants on which CD intended to experiment is given by two contemporary lists of hothouse plants in CD’s hand, reproduced in Appendix VI.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3893,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3893