Ɛpsilon

From T. H. Huxley   22 January 1875

Athenæum Club | Pall Mall S.W.

Jny. 22. 1875

My dear Darwin

I write on behalf of the Polar Committee of the Royal Society to ask for any suggestions you may be inclined to offer us, as instructions to the Naturalists who are to accompany the new Expedition1

The task of drawing up detailed instructions is divided among a lot of us; but you are as full of ideas as an egg is full of meat and are shrewdly suspected of having, somewhere in your capacious cranium, a store of notions, which could be of great value to the Naturalists—

All I can say is that if you have not already ‘collected facts’ on this topic it will be the first subject I ever suggested to you on which you had not—

Of course we do not expect you to put yourself to any great trouble—nor ask for such a thing—: but if you will jot down any notes that occur to you we shall be thankful—

We must have everything in hand for printing by March 15th—

Ever | Yours very faithy | T H Huxley

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Hot Spring’2 pencil
1
In December 1874, the British Government announced its intention to despatch an expedition to reach the North Pole and to explore the coasts of Greenland and adjacent lands. The Royal Society of London, of which Huxley was a secretary, recommended naturalists for the expedition and undertook the editing of a scientific manual. (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 24 (1875–6): 77–8.) The manual was published as Thomas Rupert Jones ed. 1875. CD had contributed the chapter on geology to the Admiralty’s Manual of scientific enquiry (Herschel ed. 1849; see Correspondence vol. 4).
2
CD’s annotation is a note for his reply to Huxley of 27 January [1875].

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9827,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9827