To F. J. Cohn   1 January 1875

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Jan 1. 75

My dear Sir

According to our English fashion “I wish you many happy returns of this day”. I write now to ask you whether I might copy two of your drawings of Aldrovanda, marked by a red cross on the sketch which you were so kind as to send me.1 I should like to add one of the quadrifid trichomes if these have been drawn by you.2 I give only woodcuts in my forthcoming work, and I should of course say that they were copied from you. I have not described Aldrovanda, & refer my readers to your work; but my few remarks would hardly be intelligble without these drawings.3 I am going to send my other drawings to the woodcut-engraver immediately; & if you grant me permission, & if I receive your work in time, I will have the drawings copied.4 It would therefore be a great assistance to me if you could send me a proof of the plate.

I hope that you will excuse my begging this favour and I remain | dear Sir | with much respect | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

LS(A)

1
Cohn had sent two small sketches of Aldrovanda (the waterwheel plant) and a galley proof of his forthcoming article on Aldrovanda (Cohn 1875a) with his letter of 4 October 1874 (Correspondence vol. 22). CD’s annotated proof copy of Cohn 1875a (not including illustrations) is in DAR 58.2: 35–43; the sketches have not been found. In Insectivorous plants, p. 323, CD reproduced a woodcut of a whorl of leaves of Aldrovanda ‘from Prof. Cohn’; it is from fig. 5 in Cohn 1875a. Aldrovanda is carnivorous, and has only one extant species, A. vesiculosa.
2
On the quadrifid processes of Aldrovanda, see Insectivorous plants, pp. 323–4. There is no illustration of a quadrifid process.
3
CD referred to Cohn 1875a in Insectivorous plants, p. 321 n.
4
The woodcuts for Insectivorous plants were made by James Davis Cooper, from drawings mostly by George Howard and Francis Darwin (Insectivorous plants, p. 3 n.).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.5 in … work,] interl in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9795A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9795A