Ɛpsilon

From John Lubbock   27 October [1867]1

High Elms

27 Oct.

My dear Mr. Darwin

Thanks for Tylor’s certificate.2 Can you give me any information as to the exact manner in which the Fuegian harpoons (like the one you gave me sometime ago) were handled & used?3 I should be very much obliged if you would.

Norgate has sent me word that he has only a dozen copies of Prehistoric Times left, so I must be preparing for a second Edition.4

Yours very sincerely | John Lubbock

C Darwin Esq

CD annotations

1.2 the Fuegian harpoons] ‘FitzRoys volume’5 above, pencil
2.1 Norgate … left, 2.2] ‘Put [Headings]’ before, pencil
Top of letter: ‘glass bottles’ pencil
1
The year is established by the reference to Edward Burnett Tylor’s certificate (see n. 2, below).
2
Tylor’s certificate as a candidate for fellowship of the Royal Society of London is dated 19 October 1867; it was read to the Society on 21 November 1867, balloted on 4 June 1868, and resubmitted in 1871. Tylor was elected a fellow on 8 June 1871 (Certificates of Election and Candidature, GB 117, ref. no. EC/187/1/12, Royal Society of London). CD’s is the first signature in the list of proposers ‘from personal knowledge’.
3
No reply from CD has been found. In 1842, CD donated two Fuegian spears to John Stevens Henslow for his ‘Marquee museum’, but no record of a similar gift to Lubbock has been found (see Correspondence vol. 2, letter to J. S. Henslow, 16 September [1842]). There is an engraving of a Fuegian bone harpoon in both the first and second editions of Prehistoric times, but Lubbock made no changes to the text of this section (see Lubbock 1865, p. 436, and Lubbock 1869, p. 529).
4
Lubbock refers to Frederick Norgate of the publishing firm Williams & Norgate and to his book Prehistoric times (see n. 3, above).
5
Lubbock refers to Robert FitzRoy and to Narrative 2: 184, in which FitzRoy describes the use of spears by Fuegians in hunting seals and porpoises. The passage is scored in CD’s copy, which is in the Rare Books Department–CUL.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6433,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6433