Ɛpsilon

To T. L. Brunton   25 September 1874

Down. Beckenham | Kent—

Sep. 25./74

My dear Sir

I suppose that you will now soon return home after your tour.1 I am extremely obliged for your information about the digestive action of pepsin with Hydrochloric acid on urea: the information will be even more useful to me than I had supposed.—2 You say in this same note of Sep. 4th. that you had succeeded in finding a photograph of Ruben’s picture & you add “I now send it”: but I am sorry to say it has never reached me & if posted must have been lost.3

With many thanks | my Dear Sir | Yrs. Sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Copy

1
The information about a tour may have been in the missing portion of Brunton’s letter of 4 September 1874.
2
See letter from T. L. Brunton, 4 September 1874 and n. 3. Brunton’s results supported CD’s own experimental observations that urea was not nutritious to Drosera (sundew; see Insectivorous plants, p. 124).
3
Brunton’s letter of 4 September 1874 is incomplete and the section referred to by CD is now missing. The reference is to a painting by Jusepe de Ribera, not Peter Paul Rubens (the copyist probably misread CD’s handwriting; see Correspondence vol. 21, letter from T. L. Brunton, 2 December 1873 and n. 2, and this volume, letter to T. L. Brunton, [29] October [1874] and n. 2.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9657,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9657