Ɛpsilon

From W. B. Dawkins   8 February 1871

Norman Road | Rusholme, Manchester

8. Feb. 1871

My dear Sir,

By this post I send to you the results obtained by following up the clue afforded by the box of bones carried so bravely by Miss Godsal on pony back from a fissure near Corwen.1 It has led up to a series of explorations, which at all events have the negative virtue of demolishing the classificatory value of platycnemism as a character of race.2 I believe that eventually we shall have quite a cave-digging and tumulus hunting mania in the county, thanks to your kindness in sending the little box of bones.

In Yorkshire our cave-hunting has not been so successful: for we cannot carry our date further back than the 3d century after Xt. Never-the-less we have lighted on a most touching picture of the misery wrought in the highly civilized dwellers in Strathclyde, by the Picts & the Northumbrians. We find ‘Roman’ keys and the most beautiful ornaments in enamel, & other objets de luxe lying in a rude accumulation of debris—like that of the Dordogne,—in a cave some 1200 feet above the sea.3

I am looking forward to your new work with a longing curiosity.4

Hoping that you are none the worse for the severe weather | I am | My dear Sir | Yours truly | W. Boyd Dawkins

Charles Darwin Esq F.R.S. | Down.

1
While on holiday in Wales in 1869, CD had sent Dawkins a box of animal bones discovered at Perthichwareu, about ten miles east of Corwen, by Gertrude Jane Mary Lloyd. Subsequent explorations by Dawkins and Lloyd revealed a number of Neolithic human cave burial sites close by. (See Correspondence vol. 17, letter to W. B. Dawkins, 19 July [1869], and letter from W. B. Dawkins, 19 October 1869, and Correspondence vol. 18, letter from W. B. Dawkins, 29 January [1870]; see also Dawkins 1874, pp. 149–158, and Lucas 2007.) Dawkins published on the finds in Dawkins 1869, Dawkins and Busk 1870a, and Dawkins and Busk 1870b. There is a copy of Dawkins and Busk 1870b, inscribed by Dawkins, in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL; it was published in the January 1871 issue of the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London. Miss Godsal was probably Mary Godsal of Iscoed Park in Shropshire, Lloyd’s niece.
2
Platycnemia: flattening of the tibia (OED). See also Correspondence vol. 18, letter from W. B. Dawkins, 29 January [1870]. Dawkins concluded that not all of the tibiae were platycnemic and that the feature was indicative not of race but of age and sex (Dawkins 1871b, Dawkins 1874, p. 155; see also Peter Lucas 2007).
3
Dawkins mentioned that he was planning to go to the Craven Caves, near Settle, North Yorkshire, in his letter of 29 January [1870] (Correspondence vol. 18). See Dawkins 1874, pp. 81–125. Dawkins refers here to the Victoria Cave, the most notable of the Craven Caves. It had evidently been occupied by Romano-British families during Pictish and Anglo-Saxon invasions. In Dawkins 1874, pp. 108–9, Dawkins discusses the Romano-British kingdoms of Strathclyde (in south-west Scotland and at times including Cumbria) and Elmet (in Yorkshire). Dawkins discussed caves in the Dordogne region of France (Perigord) in Dawkins 1874, pp. 337–47.
4
Dawkins refers to Descent, which was published 24 February 1871 (Freeman 1977).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7477,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7477