Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

Letter signed (‘Charles Darwin’) to [Henry Nottidge] Moseley, Down, Beckenham, Kent, 7 February 1877.

Two pages, 203 x 125mm, headed notepaper. Provenance: by descent.

On velvet worms, deep-sea dwellers and hermaphrodites, and mentioning Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin would like very much to see Moseley’s photographs, which should be sent by [Joseph Dalton] Hooker to Orpington Station S.E.R. ‘as that is much the safest route. I was very glad to read your paper on the N. Zealand Peripatus & likewise yr discussion on the colours of deep sea animals. When I read Mr Bullar’s paper on the self-fertilising hermaphrodite I suspected some error but could not conceive what it was’.

Darwin had been interested in Moseley’s work on the velvet worm Peripatus capensis for some time – as demonstrated by a letter of 22 November 1876 [see previous lot] – but their shared interests were broad ranging. Here, Darwin asks Moseley to have the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker – one of his closest friends – send him a collection of Moseley’s photographs, probably relating to the Challenger expedition or to facial expressions (two topics on which a photograph and books had been exchanged previously), as well as mentioning a paper on hermaphrodites.

Not published in the Darwin Correspondence Project.

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