RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Fragment of an 1881 letter to F. M. Balfour]. Memorial to the late Professor Balfour. Cambridge Independent Press (4 November): 5.
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed and edited by John van Wyhe 12.2019. RN2
NOTE: See record in the Freeman Bibliographical Database, enter its Identifier here.
This purports to be a quotation from a 6 July 1881 letter to Francis Maitland Balfour. The wording differs from that in the original letter, now in the Natural History Museum (General Special Collections DC AL 1/21): "from you who I well know will some day be the chief of the English Biologists". See Correspondence vol. 29.
[page] 5
MEMORIAL TO THE LATE PROFESSOR BALFOUR.
MEETING AT THE UNION SOCIETY.
[...]
It was a letter from Charles Darwin thanking Balfour for the present to him of the second volume of "Comparitive Embryology," and Darwin, with his accustomed humility, said how unworthy he was to receive so great a work, and, he added, "from one whom I feel sure will one day be the first of English biologists." In that opinion Darwin was not alone.
Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
File last updated 28 November, 2022