Ɛpsilon

To ?   18 July [1873?]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

July 18th

Dear Sir

I am sorry to say that I am not anatomist enough to say whether your power is very unusual, but I believe it to be so.— The capacity of moving the scalp is not very infrequent, except to the extreme degree referred to by me; but the remarkable part of that case was the inheritance of the faculty.2

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch Darwin

1
The year is conjectured from a note on the letter in an unknown hand. The notepaper, with the address in the centre, is of the sort that CD used between January 1872 and November 1874.
2
CD had discussed a case of the inherited ability to contract the scalp muscles in Descent 1: 20. It had been reported by Alphonse de Candolle in his letter of 2 July 1868 (Correspondence vol. 16).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8982,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8982