Ɛpsilon

To Anton Dohrn   [after 7 February 1875]1

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

My dear Dr Dohrn

Many thanks for your most kind letter. I most heartily rejoice at your improved health & at the success of your grand undertaking, which will have so much influence on the progress of Zoology throughout Europe.2 If we look to England alone what capital work has already been done at the Station by Balfour & Ray Lankester.3 By the way I was sorry to see the attack on the latter by Fol.4 In about another years time you will have another promising young naturalist with you from this country namely Mr Romanes.5 When you come to England I suppose that you will bring Mrs Dohrn, & we shall be delighted to see you both here   I have often boasted that I have had a live Uhlan in my house!6 It will be very interesting to me to read your new views on the ancestry of the Vertebrates. I shall be very sorry to give up the Ascidians to whom I feel profound gratitude; but the great thing as it appears to me, is that any link whatever should be found between the main divisions of the Animal Kingdom.7 I am working very hard in getting ready for the Press a book on Insectivorous Plants;8 & the experiments on their power of digestion are I think interesting

With the most sincere good wishes | I remain my dear Dr Dohrn | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin

LS

1
The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Anton Dohrn, 7 February 1875.
2
See letter from Anton Dohrn, 7 February 1875 and nn. 2 and 3. Dohrn had reported that the Zoological Station at Naples was on a better financial footing.
3
Francis Maitland Balfour had studied the development of elasmobranch fishes (sharks and dogfish) while at the station in 1874; Edwin Ray Lankester had worked on embryonic development in cephalopods and gastropods, and the histology of a marine worm, Sipunculus nudus, in 1871–2 (see Balfour 1874 and Lankester 1873a and 1873b).
4
In an article on the development of pteropods (Fol 1875), Hermann Fol had been critical of some of the observations on embryonic development in Lankester 1873a; see Fol 1875, pp. 34, 88, 93. Pteropods, or sea butterflies, are marine gastropods in the class Opisthobranchia.
5
No record of George John Romanes’s visiting Naples has been found.
6
Dohrn’s wife was Maria Dohrn. In the summer of 1870, Dohrn served in an Uhlan (cavalry) regiment of the Prussian army. In September of that year he met CD, who asked what an Uhlan was. Dohrn replied that an Uhlan was standing in front of him. CD revealed he had imagined Uhlans were tribal people from the eastern frontier of Germany. See Heuss 1991, p. 108.
7
See letter from Anton Dohrn, 7 February 1875 and nn. 6 and 7. Dohrn argued that vertebrates originated from annelids (segmented worms) while CD favoured the view that they were descended from ascidians (sea squirts). CD had interpreted discoveries about embryological similarities in ascidian and vertebrate larvae as demonstrating a clear genealogical link between vertebrates and their invertebrate ancestors (see Descent 1: 205–6).
8
Insectivorous plants was published on 2 July 1875 (CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9852,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9852