Ɛpsilon

To George Howard Darwin   6 February [1869]1

Feb 6

My dear George

Perhaps you wd. like to read enclosed letter from Croll. & you can some time return it.— What he means by Gravitation & Heat I do not understand.2

Sir J. Lubbock has been calling here, & he seemed to regret that you had not accepted the Eton proposal, as a grand opening for making a great school scientific; but he agreed that without you felt a decided taste for the work, it wd. not answer.—3 He thought scientific masters wd soon occupy as high & as profitable a place as the classical masters.

Yours affect | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from James Croll, 4 February 1869.
2
CD evidently enclosed the letter from James Croll, 4 February 1869. Gravitational heat is energy released when masses aggregate, converting their original potential energy into heat energy (see Thomson 1862a). See letter from James Croll, 4 February 1869 and n. 5.
3
George had recently visited Eton and evidently had been considering a teaching position there (see letter from G. H. Darwin, 6 February 1869). John Lubbock had been a pupil at Eton from 1845 to 1848; he was later critical of the emphasis on classics to the exclusion of other subjects (Hutchinson 1914, 1: 16–17). At Eton, physical science was introduced for the Fifth Form in 1869 (Lyte 1911, p. 529).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5843,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5843