To William Bernhard Tegetmeier   6 January [1867]1

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

Jan. 6th

My dear Sir

I return by this Post in tin cannister & therefore I trust safely the two skulls of the Horned Fowl & White Crested Polish, & most sincerely do I thank you for their loan & for your great kindness in having allowed me to keep them so long & have them engraved.—2

My M.S. is all in Printers’ Hands, but I do not suppose my Book will be out till next November, as Murray does not like publishing except in Spring or Autumn3

I shall never have finished correcting before the end of the Spring.—

My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

I have changed all my numerous References to your new Poultry Book—4

1
The year is established by the reference to the manuscript of Variation having been sent to the printers (see n. 3, below).
2
Tegetmeier sent skulls of wild and domesticated fowls for CD to examine in April 1861 (see Correspondence vol. 9). CD returned some of the specimens in 1864, but retained some to be engraved for Variation (see Correspondence vols. 12 and 13). CD sent the skulls of the white-crested Polish and the horned fowl to George Brettingham Sowerby Jr for engraving in 1866 (see Correspondence vol. 14, letter to W. B. Tegetmeier, 18 [December 1866] and n. 4). In Variation 1: 260, CD acknowledged ‘the kindness of Mr. Tegetmeier’ in lending nearly half of the fifty-three skulls examined. Engravings of the skulls of a white-crested Polish cock and of a horned fowl appear in Variation 1: 262, 263, and 265.
3
CD refers to the manuscript of Variation, and to the printing firm William Clowes & Sons (see letter from John Murray, 2 January [1867]). Murray had postponed publication of the fourth edition of Origin from July to early November 1866 (see Correspondence vol. 14, letter from John Murray, 18 July [1866]; see also letter to J. D. Hooker, 3 and 4 August [1866]). Variation was published in January 1868 (Freeman 1977).
4
Tegetmeier edited a revision of the first edition of The poultry book (Wingfield and Johnson 1853) in 1856 and 1857; however, the publishers went out of business before the edition was complete (see Correspondence vol. 14, letter from W. B. Tegetmeier, 22 January [1866] and n. 10). Wingfield and Johnson 1856–7 was superseded by Tegetmeier 1867; both are in the Darwin Library–CUL, and are annotated by CD (see Marginalia 1: 798–803). Tegetmeier 1867 was originally published in fifteen instalments in 1866 and 1867. In 1866, Tegetmeier asked CD twice to cite Tegetmeier 1867, rather than Wingfield and Johnson 1856–7 (see Correspondence vol. 14). Tegetmeier 1867 is cited frequently in the chapter on fowls in Variation (1: 225–75); Wingfield and Johnson 1856–7 is not cited.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

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Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5347,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5347