Ɛpsilon

To Charles Lyell   22 May [1872]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

May 22

My dear Lyell

Very many thanks for your letter. You will find at p. 332 & again at p. 348 of new Edit. of Origin some remarks on forms not changing when migrating in a body.—2 Some naturalists have been struck with probable truth of this view.— By the way if you care to read anything new on general subject, a pamphet by one of best zoologists in Europe, Prof. Weismann, viz “Ueber den Einfluss der Isolirung: Leipzig 1872”, is well worth in some respects, reading.—3

What a grand tour you have had & how young you are: I wish I was as youthful.—4

Ever yours | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the sixth edition of Origin, which was published in February 1872 (Freeman 1977); see n. 2, below.
2
Lyell’s letter has not been found. In Origin 6th ed., p. 332, CD wrote that Arctic species moving south in a body as the climate changed would not have been liable to much modification; on p. 348, he applied the same argument to species arriving on an island in body, or receiving regular reinforcements from the same species on the mainland.
3
There is a heavily annotated copy of Weismann 1872 in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 857–60). See also letter to August Weismann, 5 April 1872.
4
In April 1872, Lyell and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Lyell, visited the Aurignac caves in the south of France (K. M. Lyell ed. 1881, 2: 438.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8345,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8345