Ɛpsilon

To T. H. Huxley   20 June [1870]1

Down | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

June 20

My dear Huxley

You were so kind as to say that you would lend me Ecker Icones Phy. (Part with Pl 30) & Bischoff Hund-eies (Part with Pl. 41) to get the embryos copied for engraving—2 I shd. keep the books only for a week.— Will you have kindness to send them by parcel Delivery Coy, to 6 Queen Anne St Cavendish Sqe. to be there on Thursday 23d, when we come to London for a week—3

If I do not hear to the contrary, I hope you will let me pay you my early Sunday call on the 26th—

I will caution Mr Ford to be very careful with your Books.—4

Ever yours | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the form of the address, with ‘Bromley’ crossed out and ‘Beckenham’ inserted by hand, a form that CD used between April 1869 and May 1871, and by the reference to a week’s visit to London in June: the Darwins were in London from Friday 24 June to Friday 1 July 1870 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).
2
CD refers to Rudolph Wagner’s Icones physiologicae (R. Wagner 1851–9), edited by Alexander Ecker, and Theodor Ludwig Wilhelm Bischoff’s Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hunde-Eies (Developmental history of the dog-egg; Bischoff 1845). CD used the illustrations of human and dog embryos in Descent 1: 15; see also ibid, p. 16, n. 11, for CD’s note on these illustrations.
3
Six Queen Anne Street, London, was the address of CD’s brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin. In fact, the Darwins seem to arrived in London on the Friday (see n. 1, above).
4
George Henry Ford made many of the illustrations for Descent.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Beckenham] before del ‘Bromley.’
1.1 Icones Phy.] interl
1.1 (Part] interl
1.5 23d] above del ‘16th’
3.1 with] above del ‘about’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6788,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6788