The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1860.1.29. Letter to John Stevens Henslow, 29 January 1860. PC-USA-CDtoHenslow1860. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Scans provided by the owner of the manuscript. Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 12.2021. RN1

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of a private collection, USA, and William Huxley Darwin. The same private collection holds:
[c. 1858]. Notes on Huber, Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis Indigènes (1810). Text & image PC-USA-OriginAnts
1858. Draft leaf of Origin. Text & image PC-USA-OriginMS270
1858-59. Draft leaf of Origin. Text & image PC-USA-OriginMS324
1859.11.11. Letter to Adam Sedgwick on sending Origin. Text & image PC-USA-SedgwickOrigin
[1859].12.24. Letter to T. H. Huxley on a manuscript on the evolution of pigeons. Text & image PC-USA-HuxleyPigeons
[1861-62]. Draft of Orchids, folio 192. Text & image Sanders-3.2017Lot96.
1870. Draft leaf of Descent. Text & image PC-USA-DescentMS10
1871. Receipt for Murray's payment for Descent. Text & image PC-USA-DescentReceipt
1871. Draft leaf of Expression. Text & image CUL-DAR185.143
1871. Draft leaf of Expression. Text & image CUL-DAR185.144
1868.02.09. Letter to Asa Gray on Variation. Text & image PC-USA-GrayVariation

This previously unpublished letter is written on paper watermarked 'Joynson 1859'. Darwin had just returned from London on 27 January. Leonard had measles and seemed to have recovered by the first week of January. On the second week, Elizabeth (Bessy) and Francis (Frank) "rash came out". Henrietta (Etty) was also ill but she did not contract measles until 1871. Darwin left for London with William to Cambridge on 30 January and he attended T. H. Huxley's lecture at the Royal Insitution on 10 February, returning home the next day. Henslow stayed at Down House from 14-16 February. (Emma Darwin's diary.) Leonard Jenyns wrote to Darwin on 4 January praising Origin considering it "one of the most valuable contributions to Nat. Hist Literature of the present day." (Correspondence vol. 8, pp. 13-14)

See: Henslow, J. S. 1861. [Letter to the editor on his opinion of Darwin's theory]. Macmillan's Magazine, no. 16 (February): 366. A2667

In the postscript Darwin wrote "What an interesting subject the Celts in Drift!" Celts were purportedly ancient human tools made of chipped flints. The drift was geologically recent gravel deposits. Darwin wrote to Lyell on 15 and 16 [February 1860] "…I hope you will succeed in finding out what the great Celts were used for, it bears on state of civilisation of the old natives.— Henslow means this spring to visit the Celt-Beds in France".

The editors of Darwin's correspondence note "Lyell was investigating the possible origin of the flints as part of his study of the antiquity of man (see Correspondence vol. 7, letters to Charles Lyell, 2 September [1859] and 20 September [1859]). … Henslow was not convinced that the celts were of the same age as the fossil remains with which they were found; he reported his doubts in a series of letters printed in the Athenaeum in 1859 and 1860. In the autumn of 1860 he visited the gravel pits in Abbeville and Amiens, where various shaped flints had been found, and returned 'impressed with the conviction, that the facts I have witnessed do not of necessity support the hypothesis of a pre-historic antiquity for these works of man.' (Athenaeum, 20 October 1860, p. 516)."

Darwin added the following line to the first American edition of Origin of species: "After the recent discoveries of flint tools or celts in the superficial deposits of France and England, few geologists will doubt that man, in a sufficiendy civilized state to have manufactured weapons, existed at a period extremely remote as measured by years; and we know that at the present day there is hardly any tribe so barbarian as not to have domesticated at least the dog." p. 23. This was slightly altered in the third edition of Origin of species: p. 18.

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Down Bromley Kent

Jan. 29th

1860 [in another hand]

My dear Henslow

The measles has been like wild-fire through the House but we are now quit of it. We shall be delighted to see you here, whenever you can spare the time. The only engagement which we know of are from Feb. 6 to 11th.—

I shall be particularly glad to hear any of your objections to my views, when

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we meet. My Book has been far more successful as yet, then I dreamed of.—

The two last chapters are in my opinion the strongest.—

Thank you much for offering to send me Jenyn's letter; which I will return to you; I shd much like to see it, though he has written to me.— I hope heartily that you will be able to come here.—

Yours affect & gratefully

C. Darwin

What an interesting subject the Celts in Drift!

Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)