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To the Royal Geographical Society    February 1843

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I am of opinion that Mr Suttor’s paper “on the Character of the Australian interior Rivers” is not worthy of publication in the Journal of the Society;1 it does not appear to me to contain any new facts, & the descriptions of the scenery are not anyways superior to those given in the Journals of every Australian traveller.— The separate notice on the Birds of the Macquarie has no pretensions to a scientific character; the only curious facts contained in it relate to the increasing rarity & extinction of several species of parrots in the colonized districts, but I do not consider this notice worth insertion in the Journal.2

Charles Darwin

Feb. 1843

1
George Suttor had emigrated to Australia in 1799 with the intention of cultivating orchard trees andvines. In 1839 he visited England and was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society.
2
None of Suttor’s work was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1843, however, he issued a book on the cultivation of the vine in Australia and New Zealand.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-662A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-662A