Ɛpsilon

From L. E. Becker   29 December 1869

28 Jackson’s Row | Albert Square | Manchester

Dec 29. 1869

My dear Sir

I have thought of sending my paper on the Lychnis to some magazine or Journal of Botany1 There are in it verbatim extracts from letters of yours to me about these flowers and I write to ask if you will give me permission to print these extracts.2 If you desire it, I will send the paper to you that you may see what the extracts are—

Do you think that Seeman’s Journal of Botany would be a good periodical to send it to or that it would be better to have it inserted in the Transactions of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society.3 I wish that the matter could be brought under the notice of botanists so that attention may be directed to the appearances during the ensuing spring.

Believe me to be | yours sincerely | Lydia E Becker

Chas Darwin Esq

1
Becker read a paper on Lychnis diurna earlier in the year; she sent a copy of the abstract in the Report of the thirty-ninth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Exeter to CD (Becker 1869a; see letter from L. E. Becker, 14 October 1869).
2
A summary of Becker’s work on Lychnis, as reported at the Exeter meeting of the British Association, appeared in the 1869 volume of Journal of Botany (Becker 1869b); a quotation is included from a letter of CD’s to Becker that must have been written on 26 or 27 May 1863 (Calendar no. 4185g, to be published in next supplement; see also Correspondence vol. 11, letter from L. E. Becker, 28 May [1863]). No other part of the letter of [26 or 27 May 1863] has been found. No further correspondence between CD and Becker has been found.
3
The Journal of Botany was edited by Berthold Carl Seemann. Becker also refers to the Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7037,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7037