To Thomas Henry Huxley   4 July [1866]1

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

July 4.

My dear Huxley

Hooker tells me of an expedition going to survey the St of Magellan.2 Admiral Sulivan several years ago discovered an astonishingly rich accumulation of fossil bones not far from the Straits3 & he will tell the Captain of the vessel & the Naturalist exactly where they cd be found.4 During many years it has seemed to me extremely desirable that these shd be collected; & here is an excellent opportunity. Hooker has suggested a memorial to the Lords of the Admiralty to be signed by a few leading Geologists & Paleontologists.5 Please read the enclosed, & observe that I do not know in the least the proper form of a Memorial & therefore the enclosed may be corrected to any extent & shall be re-copied, or shall go as it stands.6 Now please consider whether you will sign this, & shew it to Sir Roderick Murchison & ask him whether he will head the list;7 perhaps he wd shew it to Professor Owen & ask him if he wd like to sign; for I do not want to have any communication with Owen.8 If in addition, the Pres. of Geolog. Soc. & Ramsay wd sign,9 that I shd think wd be ample, & the Memorial might be sent in at once, for there is no time to lose. If it will do as it stands & all goes smooth, will you forward it to the Admiralty & let me have a line to hear the result, as I must inform Sulivan. I may just add that some the fossils here referred to are allied to Toxodon.10

My dear Huxley | ever yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS(A)

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from T. H. Huxley, 6 July 1866.
2
CD had been told of the expedition to the Straits of Magellan in the letter from J. D. Hooker, 4 February 1866. See also letter from B. J. Sulivan, 27 June 1866, and letter to J. D. Hooker, 30 June [1866].
3
See letter from B. J. Sulivan, 27 June 1866 and n. 7. Sulivan was a rear admiral (DNB).
4
Richard Charles Mayne was captain of HMS Nassau, and Robert Oliver Cunningham was ship’s naturalist (see letter from B. J. Sulivan, 27 June 1866 and nn. 6 and 7).
6
The memorial has not been found: a draft of it, dated [2–4 July 1866], is reproduced in this volume.
7
Roderick Impey Murchison was director-general of the Geological Survey of Great Britain (DNB).
8
Richard Owen had established a new mammalian order on the basis of some of the fossils found by Sulivan in Patagonia (see Owen 1853). On CD’s deteriorating relationship with Owen, especially following Owen’s critical review of Origin ([Owen] 1860), see, for example, Correspondence vol. 8, letter to Asa Gray, 25 April [1860], and Autobiography, pp. 104–5.
9
The president of the Geological Society of London was William John Hamilton; Andrew Crombie Ramsay was a vice-president (List of the Geological Society of London, DNB).
10
Toxodon is a genus of rhinoceros-like notoungulates; it was described by Owen (Owen 1838 and Fossil Mammalia, pp. 16–35), based on specimens collected in Patagonia by CD (see Correspondence vols. 1 and 2, and South America, pp. 180–1). Owen had also described the affinities between Toxodon and the fossils found by Sulivan, which he identified as belonging to a new genus, Nesodon (Owen 1853, pp. 298–99, 309).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 not … Straits] interl in CD’s hand
1.17 some] interl in CD’s hand
*N
To Friedrich Hildebrand  22 July [1866]1
2.2 immediately 2.3] interl in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5144,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5144