Ɛpsilon

To Tord Tamerlan Teodor Thorell   20 April 1870

Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

20 April 1870

[Darwin expresses heartfelt thanks to Tord Tamerlan Teodore Thorell, a junior professor of zoology at the University of Upsala, Sweden, for a copy of his On European Spiders.]1

I have looked through it & have admired the wonderful research & labour which you have bestowed on this highly useful work. It has been a great satisfaction to me to observe in one or two passages, especially in an admirable discussion on the principles of classification, that you believe in the evolution of species2

incomplete3

1
There is a lightly annotated copy of Thorell’s On European spiders (Thorell 1869–70) in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 806).
2
CD cited Thorell 1869–70 in Descent 1: 315 n. 71. In Thorell 1869–70, p. 42 n. 1, Thorell wrote, ‘I believe with darwin, “that propinquity of descent—the only known cause of similarity of organic beings—is the bond, hidden as it is by various degrees of modification, which is partially revealed to us by our classifications”.’ The quotation is from Origin 4th ed., p. 489.
3
The original letter is complete and is described in the sale catalogue as being two pages long, and signed.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Beckenham] before del ‘Bromley.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7168A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7168A