Charles Darwin to Joshua Toulmin Smith, January 4, 1860.

Charles Darwin to Joshua Toulmin Smith, January 4, 1860, Sieveking Mss.

The earliest of these letters in the Lilly’s collections is addressed to Joshua Toulmin Smith (1816-1869), a lawyer, geologist and an ardent advocate of local self-government. Smith was an expert on Ventriculidae, a class of fossilized sponges “of great elegance of form” from the Cretaceous period, the subject of several of Smith’s articles published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History (not, as Darwin misremembers, the Geological Transactions) between 1847 and 1848, collected in his book The Ventriculidae of The Chalk: Their Microscopic Structure, Affinities, and Classification; Including Figures and Descriptions of Every Species (London: Richard and John E. Taylor, 1848). Darwin mentions “that excellent observer Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill” in Origin (chapter IX) as having demonstrated conclusively the “slowness with which the rocky coasts are worn away.” Such vast periods of time would make it difficult for anyone ever to understand completely the work of natural selection!

Smith’s original note is not extant, but he sent a copy of his book to Darwin on January 6, right after he had received his reply. In his letter, he praised Darwin for the diagram included in Origin, which reflected well the generations of sponges he had identified (“There is both the change & branching off of many & the retention of single forms, just as you have pictured”) and invited him to view his collections of sponges “at any future time.” Apparently, he had not picked up on the strong hint in Darwin’s letter that he was “much engaged” (J. T. Smith to Darwin, January 6, 1860, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 2642). Smith’s book is in Darwin’s library at Down House, with its pages partially uncut. The letter remains unpublished and is not referenced in the Darwin Correspondence Project.