To V. O. Kovalevsky   2 June [1871]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

June 2d

My dear Sir

You have been very kind about Körte; but I am sorry you ran the risk of sending it. I return it by this Post, & I hope to Heaven it may reach you safely.— I think I have found cause of absence of passage: there must have been a 2nd. Edit in 1829, for Köppen gives this date & refers to a second Part by Sydow which does not appear in the Edit of 1828.2

You must not take more trouble, but if ever you shd. come across in any Library the Edit. of 1829 pray look to p. 33, & probably you will find a short passage, which wd. be of value to me.—3

I quite agree with you about the savage brutality of the Versailles army, but on the other hand I must think that the Communists have made themselves everlastingly infamous.—4

I shall be very happy to see you in England.5 I am far from well today, so no more, except once again to thank you.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to V. O. Kovalevsky, 3 May 1871.
2
Kovalevsky had borrowed one of Heinrich Friedrich Franz Körte’s works on migratory locusts in Russia (Körte 1828) from a library in Berlin and forwarded it to CD (see letter from V. O. Kovalevsky, 28 May [1871]). Körte 1829, the book CD had requested, was not a later edition of Körte 1828, but a different work. In Köppen 1866, p. 11, Friedrich Theodor Köppen referred to the second part of Körte 1829 as the official report of the Prussian district administrator, Sydow, who has not been further identified.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7796,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7796