Ɛpsilon

To H. W. Bates   22 April [1868]1

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

Ap. 22d

My dear Bates.

Hearty thanks.— you are the man to answer a question fully & clearly.— I return the drawing which & to whole case is capital for me.—2

I have nearly finished my M.S. on Lepidoptera & will then have it copied by a man who writes an excellent hand.—

Your most kind offer of reading it has made all the difference to me: if I had not known this I shd have been tormented the whole time with doubts.3 I have tried to be cautious & to avoid blunders, but when one writes on a subject, with which one is not familiar, mistakes almost inevitably occur.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

Two-thirds of the M.S. relates to facts communicated by you to me, or published by you.—

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from H. W. Bates, 20 April 1868.
2
CD refers to a drawing of a conspicuous caterpillar. See letter from H. W. Bates, 20 April 1868 and n. 1.
3
Bates probably offered to read CD’s manuscript on Lepidoptera when they met in London (see letter to H. W. Bates 18 March [1868] and n. 4). No manuscript on Lepidoptera has been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL, but in a letter of 17 January 1870 (Calendar no. 7082), Bates told CD he was returning a corrected manuscript of the entomological section of Descent.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6135,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6135