To Norman Lockyer   13 May [1874]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

May 13th

My dear Sir

I enclose the notes about my life & list of my publications. I do not know in the least whether they will be of any use. They certainly are not fit to print. I thought that you were going to get some one to write a sketch, & then these dates & list might have been of use.2

I return with thanks the letters about Primroses: they contain very little new. Dr. Bree’s is the best.— I fear that you will regret having admitted my first letter, which has generated such a shoal of letters.3

Pray believe me | Yours faithfully & obliged | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Nature, 18 April [1874] (see n. 3, below).
2
The enclosure has not been found, but was used for the factual account of CD’s life included at the beginning of Asa Gray’s profile of him in the ‘Scientific worthies’ series in Nature, 4 June 1874 (A. Gray 1874c). See also letter to Asa Gray, 3 June [1874].
3
See letter to Nature, 18 April [1874]. CD asked correspondents whether they had observed birds pulling off the flowers of primroses. The replies were printed in Nature, 30 April 1874, p. 509, and 7 May 1874, pp. 6–7. Charles Robert Bree’s letter was not printed. Lockyer was the editor of Nature.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9458A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9458A