To Leonard Jenyns   [May–September 1842]

12 Upper Gower St

Wednesday

Dear Jenyns.—

I am very glad to hear the notes to White are only the forerunner of a separate work— I hope you will repeat in it any original matter of your own, that first appears in Whites Selbourne1 —so that one may have all your’s in one vol. together.

Your note on the Furnarius appears to me just the thing.— it is Furn. cunicularius of G. R. Gray,2 although according to my notions, he has no more right to append his name to this couplet than the Great Mogul has.— Stricklands laws will I think be useful in checking the egoism of some authors.—3

Yours most truly | Charles Darwin

1
Jenyns was editing Gilbert White’s Natural history of Selborne (Jenyns, ed. 1843).
2
A species allied to the oven bird, described by Gray and named ‘F. cunicularius G. R. Gray’ in Birds, pp. 65–6. CD underlined ‘G. R.’ to distinguish him from his older brother, J. E. Gray, zoological keeper at the British Museum. The note quoting CD’s description in Journal of researches, pp. 112–13, appears on p. 216 of Jenyns’ edition. Furnarius cunicularius is a synonym of Geositta cunicularia, the common miner.
3
The forthcoming British Association report on zoological nomenclature. See letter to H. E. Strickland, 31 May [1842], for CD’s comment on Gray’s nomenclatural practice.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-627,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-627