From J. V. Carus   5 February 1875

Leipzig

Febr 5th. 1875.

My dear Sir,

The printing of the new German edition of the “Descent of Man” will soon be finished.1 As I shall then begin to translate the “Journal of Researches”, may I ask you if you have to make some alteration or addition to it. I have the edition of 1860 and you would oblige me by telling if this is the newest.2 The “Journal” will form the first Volume of our new Edition of your works3   In the mean time your book on Insectivorous Plants will be ready.4 Would you kindly let me know, when it will be out and how large it will be? I proposed to the Publisher to bring all your botanical papers into one volume, viz, that on Climbing plants, on Orchids, on Di- and Trimorphism and on Drosera and Dionea   The last one, of which you were kind enough to write me about eighteen months ago, is most likely the new one on Insectivora5   Wouldn’t these papers be too large for being collected into one volume? If so, could you give me perhaps a hint, what other papers I could take to make two botanical volumes?

In a few weeks I shall have the pleasure to send you the concluding volume of my Zoology.6 The Index is now in print.

I subjoin a list of some Errata in the Descent, which you will alter perhaps in a new print7

Believe me, | My dear Sir, | Yours ever sincerely | J. Victor Carus

1
The third German edition of Descent was a translation of Descent 2d ed. (Carus trans. 1875a).
2
Journal of researches (1860) was a reprint of Journal of researches 2d ed., published in 1845; another reprint had been issued in 1870 (Journal of researches (1870)).
3
Carus’s translation of Journal of researches (Carus trans. 1875b) is the first volume of Ch. Darwin’s gesammelte Werke (Ch. Darwin’s collected works; Carus trans. 1875–87). The publisher was E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagshandlung.
4
Carus’s translation of Insectivorous plants was published in 1876 (Carus trans. 1876a).
5
Carus refers to Climbing plants and Orchids, and probably to CD’s papers ‘Dimorphic condition in Primula’, ‘Three forms of Lythrum salicaria’, and ‘Illegitimate offspring of dimorphic and trimorphic plants’. Much of the material from these papers was reworked in Forms of flowers, which was included in the German edition of CD’s collected works. Carus evidently intended to refer to Insectivorous plants, not the former order of insect-eating mammals, Insectivora. See Correspondence vol. 21, letter to J. V. Carus, 2 August [1873]. CD discussed Drosera (the genus of sundews) and Dionaea (Venus fly trap) in Insectivorous plants.
6
Carus refers to the second part of the first volume of Handbuch der Zoologie (Carus and Gerstaecker 1863–75); the volumes appeared out of sequence, the second volume having been published in 1863, while the first part of the first volume appeared in 1868. Carus had written all of the first volume and part of the second. CD’s copy of the first volume of the Handbuch is in the Darwin Library–Down.
7
The list has not been found.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9841,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9841