Ɛpsilon

To J. J. Moulinié   5 December 1871

Down,| Beckenham, Kent.

De 5. 1871

My dear Sir

I send 4 sheets by this post of the new & cheap edit.1 They contain no important additions, only a few corrections of style. The other sheets shall follow as soon as I receive them. I will call yr attention to any important additions, but I feel nearly sure that none in the earlier chapters will be worth giving as an appendix, which is always an evil.2 When you come to the new Chap VII I shall have to beg you to consider what had better be done.3

In the first part of this Chap., I have taken 6 or 8 pages from Old Chap. IV, but have modified them a good deal: the remainder of Chap. 7. is quite new, & wd I think be worth translating. Perhaps the best plan wd be to put a foot-note & state how the case is, & then give, as a short separate chapter, the new part of the new Chap. 7. But I hope you will take this whole subject into your consideration. In the succeeding chapters there are here & there a good many corrections, additions & omissions; & it will be necessary for you to be so good as to look through all these remaining chapters.4

With Mrs Darwin’s very kind remembrances5 I remain | My dear Sir | yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS(A)

1
CD enclosed proof-sheets of Origin 6th ed.; Moulinié had agreed to incorporate changes from that edition into the French translation that he had prepared from Origin 5th ed. (see letter from J. J. Moulinié, 7 July 1871 and n. 1, and letter to J. J. Moulinié, 12 July [1871] and n. 2).
2
See letter from J. J. Moulinié, 7 July 1871. Moulinié had suggested publishing corrections to already printed chapters of his translation of Origin (Moulinié trans. 1873) in an appendix.
3
CD inserted a substantially new chapter entitled ‘Miscellaneous objections to the theory of natural selection’ in Origin 6th ed., pp. 168–204; this appears at the end of Moulinié’s translation under the heading ‘Nouveau chapitre qui forme le chapitre VII dans la sixième et dernière édition anglaise’ (‘New chapter that forms chapter VII in the sixth and latest English edition’; Moulinié trans. 1873, pp. 525–74).
4
A list of changes made to the later chapters of Origin 6th ed. appears in Moulinié trans. 1873, pp. 574–84.
5
Moulinié had visited Down on 31 August 1868 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.4 in … chapters] interl in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8095,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8095