Ɛpsilon

To K. T. E. von Siebold   4 December 1871

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Decr. 4. 1871

Dear & Respected Sir

I have been much gratified by receiving your letter & photograph, for during very many years I have held your name in the greatest honour; & I especially thank you for your very kind words about what I have attempted to do in natural science.1

Your view of pseudova,—that they perhaps constitute a return to a primordial state of things is quite new to me.—2 I have not as yet received your recent work on Parthenogenesis;3 but I received some years ago your very interesting memoir on Polistes, which seemed to me a worthy successor to your famous book on the Hive-bee; & this in fact first started this important subject.4

With most sincere respect & my best thanks, I remain | Dear Sir | Yours very faithfully, Ch. Darwin

1
See letter from K. T. E. von Siebold, 29 November 1871 and n. 5. CD had cited Siebold’s work in a number of his own publications, including Living Cirripedia (1851), Variation, and Descent.
3
See letter from K. T. E. von Siebold, 29 November 1871. CD’s copy of Siebold 1871 is in the Darwin Library–Down.
4
CD’s annotated copy of Siebold’s paper on the wasp Polistes gallica (Siebold 1869) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL; his annotated copy of Siebold’s book On a true parthenogenesis in moths and bees (Siebold 1857) is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 756–7). Polistes gallicus (‘gallica’ is a misspelling) is the paper wasp.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.2 omitted point before ‘12’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8094A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8094A