To William Turner   5 June [1866]1

Down,

June 5,

My dear Sir

I thank you sincerely for having sent me so many of your papers, several of which have interested me much;2 and the one on cellular pathology might have been written “to order,” it was so exactly what I wanted to know.3 It was a real pleasure to me to have had the good fortune to have met you at the Royal Soc. Soirée.4

My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin.

Copy

1
The year is established by the reference to the soirée at the Royal Society of London (see n. 4, below).
2
Signed author’s offprints of Turner 1863, 1864b, and 1866b are in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. The papers are lightly annotated. Copies of Turner 1864a, 1865, and 1866a are also in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL, and are lightly annotated.
3
CD discussed cell theory in his chapter on pangenesis in Variation, and cited Turner’s paper on cellular pathology (Turner 1863) as supportive of the view that all cells develop from pre-existing cells (see Variation 2: 370 and Turner 1863, pp. 5–6). On CD’s use of cell theory in his work on generation and heredity, see Geison 1969 and Bowler 1989, pp. 59–60.
4
CD had attended a reception at the Royal Society on 28 April 1866 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5113,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5113