Ɛpsilon

To F. S. B. François de Chaumont   3 February [1873]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Feb 3d

Dear Dr. De Chaumont

I am much obliged to you for sending, & to Dr. MacDonald for having allowed you to send to me his paper.— I have read it with great interest; but I do not know enough of the lower organisms for my judgment to be of any value. A dozen years ago the Council of the R. Soc. wd have shuddered in horror at such a communication; but now I daresay it will be well received & appreciated.—2 The lines of genetic connection offer, however, a most difficult problem; & I sometimes doubt whether Häckel has not done mischief by facing, in so bold & admirable a manner, the difficulty.3

I hope your little daughter may flourish in all ways, & shrug her shoulders & twiddle her fingers in the orthodox fashion, & thus confer a benefit on humanity, by showing the force & truth of the great principle of inheritance!4 Seriously I believe more & more that all who help in spreading a knowledge & belief of the laws of inheritance do real service to mankind.—

Pray thank Dr Macdonald for me & believe me | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from F. S. B. F. de Chaumont, 31 January 1873.
2
See letter from F. S. B. F. de Chaumont, 31 January 1873 and n. 1. John Denis Macdonald’s paper was read on 20 March 1873 and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (Macdonald 1873).
3
Macdonald had drawn up a physiological classification of protozoans on which he based his classification scheme for invertebrates (Macdonald 1873, pp. 219, 223). This classification reversed the evolutionary order of some organisms from that which had been described and figured by Ernst Haeckel in Haeckel 1866, 2: 410–17 and table I.
4
CD refers to Chaumont’s new daughter, Louise François de Chaumont. See letter from F. S. B. F. de Chaumont, 31 January 1873 and n. 2. In Expression, pp. 265–6, CD had described the habits of shoulder shrugging and finger rubbing in Chaumont’s older daughters, but without naming the family.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 judgment to] ‘to’ interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8757,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8757