Ɛpsilon

To C. A. Bennet   [before 3 January 1865]1

Professor Rutsmeyer expresses the warmest gratitude to Your Lordship. The Cow’s skull is not yet clean enough for final examination, but the professor feels pretty sure that it will prove to belong to the gigantic Primigenius race (reduced now in size), which was described by Cæsar in the forests of Germany, and which is now extinct.2 It is, however, abundantly found fossil in northern Europe. I think Your Lordship will be pleased to hear that you and your ancestors have preserved this great ruminant.

Incomplete

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Ludwig Rütimeyer, 3 January 1865 (Correspondence vol. 13).
2
CD had been trying to secure a skull of one of the white cattle at Chillingham Park since 1861 (Correspondence vol. 9, letter to Ludwig Rütimeyer, 5 December [1861]). The cattle were kept on the Chillingham Park estate of Charles Augustus Bennet, earl of Tankerville. It was believed that the Chillingham cattle were the closest living representatives of Britain’s original wild cattle (see Hindmarsh 1839). Rütimeyer discussed the Chillingham cattle in Rütimeyer 1867a, pp. 130–3, 146–9. Julius Caesar described German aurochs in De bello Gallico 6: 28.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4735F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4735F