Ɛpsilon

To Henry Willett   19 April [1874]1

Down | Beckenham. Kent.

Ap 19th.

My dear Sir

Mr. Balfour is in Naples & I do not know his address,2 so that the circular does not signify. I was very glad to see that your great undertaking was progressing favourably.3 You must be reading one of the first Editions of the Origin, for I altered & omitted long ago that part about the rate of the sea eating back the land, in which I blundered most egregiously4

My dear Sir | Yrs. very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Copy

1
The year is established by the reference to Francis Maitland Balfour’s stay in Naples (see n. 2, below).
2
Balfour was in Naples in April 1874; he had been doing research at the Zoological Station there since late 1873 (see letter from Michael Foster, 7 April [1874] and n. 2).
3
No letter from Willett has been found; the circular may have involved the Wealden Exploration Fund, which Willett had established to support geological excavations of the Sussex Downs ([Willett] 1878).
4
CD refers to his revised discussion of the denudation of the Weald (see Origin 2d ed., p. 285, and Origin 3d ed., p. xii), which had important consequences for his estimates of geological time.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9420,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9420