Ɛpsilon

To William Bowman   10 March [1863]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

March 10th

My dear Mr. Bowman

I thank you heartily for the trouble which you have taken. I will venture to give you a little, & but a little, more trouble by sending you at most 3 or 4 pages of M.S, well copied out, after I have worked your remarks in.—2

You will thus be able to see whether I have made any blunder, & possibly some cases might occur to you worth adding; for instance any inherited deviation in form or function of the iris, or in shape of lens.—3 The reading over my few pages cannot cause you much trouble & you could strike out anything with a pencil—

With sincere thanks | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I shall not get the M.S. ready for a week or so,—

I shd. be glad of any case of ill-growth of eye-lashes inherited.—4

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to James Paget, 11 March [1863] (Correspondence vol. 11; see n. 4, below).
2
See this volume, Supplement, letter from William Bowman, 31 January [1863]. Bowman had suggested meeting CD to talk about a subject in which CD was interested. Bowman’s remarks have not been found in any letter, but may have been given to CD in person while he was visiting London from 4 to 14 February 1863. CD included information from Bowman on inherited imperfections of the eye in Variation 2: 8–10.
3
There is no specific mention of inherited deviations in the iris or the shape of the lens in the information supplied by Bowman in Variation; the particular conditions on which CD cited Bowman were hypermetropia, myopia, squinting, and cataract (Variation 2: 8–9).
4
CD asked the same question of James Paget (see Correspondence vol. 11, letter to James Paget, 11 March [1863]). Information from Paget on the inheritance of long hairs in eyebrows, but not eyelashes, is given in Variation 2: 8.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.2 inherited] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5030,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5030