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[…]

It is not known how Charles Darwin learned about Mrs. Whitby: whether from his close friend Charles Lyell, from other friends, or from the Farmer's Journal (he was an omnivorous reader of periodicals), or when he and she were first in contact. Evidences of their contacts, arranged in chronological sequence, are the Lehigh letter, some passages in Darwin's book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, and the Academy letter. The Lehigh letter reads:

Dear Madam

I am extremely much obliged by your kindness in sending me so capital a suite of male & female specimens. I am surprised at there not being a marked difference in the size of the wings: what you tell me of the wings of the female being smaller than those of the male, in their early growth is quite new to me. I hope to get a friend to enquire how these facts are with the species in India. I am sincerely grateful for your kind promise to make further observations on the points which interest me next summer. Pray believe me, dear Madam.

Yours Truly obliged

C. Darwin

[…]

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[…]

When Darwin received the above results of Mrs. Whitby's experiments on the inheritance of dark eyebrows in silk caterpillars, he wrote her, on "Aug. 12th" in the year 1848, the letter preserved in the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine:

 

My dear Madam

I cannot express too strongly my thanks for the extraordinary trouble which you have taken in the interesting experiment, of which you send me the result—I had given up all hopes of knowing whether peculiarities in the caterpillar states were hereditary, but now the point is amply proved: there is indeed a wide difference between a probability, however high & such an experiment as you have made—I am, also, much obliged for the information about the S. French caterpillar breeds: I was not aware the differences were so great. If it would not be asking too great a favour I shd be greatly obliged if you would take the trouble to inform me, should you ever observe anything remarkable in the hereditary principles, or in the differences in structure or habits between breeds in the Silk-worms—I dare not do more than hint my curiosity to know whether the Fretes would prove hereditary,—i e whether it would be possible to make a breed with cocoons destitute of silk-In the eyes of all silk-growers,

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this assuredly would appear the most useless of experiments ever tried—Pray accept my most cordial thanks, & believe me with much respect.

Yours Sincerely obliged

C. Darwin