To Nature   24 February [1877]1

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

Feb. 24th

Dear Sir

I shall feel pleased & honoured, shd Mr Lockyer think the correspondence worth inserting in Nature.

But in this case I earnestly hope that it will be stated that Prof. Harting has sent it you, for it wd. have been intolerable vanity in me to have sent it.2 My name is as below, but generally I drop the R.—

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Robert Darwin

1
The year is established by the reference to the correspondence published in Nature, 8 March 1877 (see n. 2, below).
2
Joseph Norman Lockyer was the editor of Nature. The letter from A. A. van Bemmelen and H. J. Veth, 6 February 1877, and CD’s reply of 12 February 1877 were published in Nature, 8 March 1877, pp. 410–11, with a covering letter from Pieter Harting.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9872F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9872F