Ɛpsilon

To William Bowman   7 August [1867]1

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

Aug. 7th

Dear Bowman

Very many thanks for your kind note & clear answers to my queries, which are valuable to me.—2 I hope to do a little more work in natural science,—much is out of the question—but I agree with you entirely that no one can say how glorious the future prospect of knowledge is.— What an instance the spectroscope is!3

With hearty thanks for your uniform kindness— believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from William Bowman, 5 August 1867.
3
The spectroscope (invented in the late 1850s by Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen) made possible the chemical analysis of stars as well as providing a highly accurate means of identifying the presence of even minute amounts of chemical substances (DSB s.v. Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert, and Bunsen, Robert Wilhelm Eberhard).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 entirely] after del ‘from’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5601,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5601