Ɛpsilon

To G. H. K. Thwaites   28 September [1868]1

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

Sept. 28th

My dear Thwaites

I write a few lines merely to thank you & to beg you to thank for me Mr. Layard for all the trouble which you have taken.2

I am surprised at the result for not only is Mr E. Layard generally very trustworthy, but Mr Blyth tells exactly the same story in regard to the same fowls in Bengal.3

The Officers of the Zoolog. Socy. very foolishly in my opinion, object to domestic varieties, so that it would not be worth while to send them there or to me.—4 I am nevertheless truly obliged for the offer.—

With cordial thanks | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from G. H. K. Thwaites of 22 July 1868.
2
CD refers to Charles Parker Layard. See letter to G. H. K. Thwaites, 19 May [1868], and letter from G. H. K. Thwaites, 22 July 1868. No more recent letter from Thwaites has been found.
3
In a letter that has not been found, Thwaites evidently passed on information from C. P. Layard concerning the breeding of black-skinned (black-boned) fowl (see letter from G. H. K. Thwaites, 22 July 1868, and letter from C. P. Layard to G. H. K. Thwaites, 28 July 1868). No recent correspondence with Edward Blyth concerning black-skinned fowl has been found. However, in 1855, Blyth mentioned difficulty in finding cocks of the black-skinned fowl and noted a similar comment by Edgar Leopold Layard in E. L. Layard 1853–4, p. 63 (see Correspondence vol. 5, letter from Edward Blyth, [22 September 1855] and n. 40). CD did not receive an answer to his question about the plumage of young black-skinned fowl until 1869 (see letter from S. O. Glenie, 27 November 1868, and Correspondence vol. 17, letter from S. O. Glenie, 20 March 1869).
4
The Zoological Society of London administered the Zoological Gardens at Regent’s Park.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.2 or] over ‘&’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6395,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6395