Ɛpsilon

To Richard Kippist   28 July [1870]1

Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

July 28

My dear Sir

I have received 5 Papers from Mr J. P. Mansel Weale of Brooklyn, near K. William’s Town, Kaffraria, which he has asked me to communicate to Linnean Soc.—2 I send them registered, with figures & specimens of the Plants referred to.— The Socy. must settle whether they are worth reading.3 There are some new & rather curious facts about Disa & Disperis, & the case of the Bee’s nest, I believe to be new. The paper on the Asclepiads wants enormous condensation; but I have no spare strength or time to undertake such work.— There is another difficulty that the plants are not named. As I have said there seems to me enough novel matter in these papers to justify me in sending them to the Society. But as there has been so much now written on the fertilisation of Orchids, their publication is another question, about which I will not venture to express an opinion.—

My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to J. P. M. Weale, 30 July 1870.
2
James Philip Mansel Weale had enclosed the papers with his letter to CD of [25 May 1870]. Kaffraria was a region on the eastern coast of South Africa, between Natal and Cape Colony; it became part of Cape Colony in 1865 (Stewart 1996).
3
Four of Weale’s papers were later published (Weale 1870a, 1870b, 1870c, and 1870d).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 Beckenham] before del ‘Bromley.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7289,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7289