Darwin, Erasmus

Darwin, Erasmus, The Botanic Garden, J. Johnson, London, 1791, 2nd... 

Darwin, Erasmus. The Botanic Garden. Jones Company, London. 1825. Darwin, Francis. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Volume I. John Murray, London. 1887. 

One of the patrons found him a house on the outskirts of Birmingham, where he could live comfortably and devote himself to scientific experimentation. Priestley set up a scientific laboratory in the house. While he lived there some of his patrons died or stopped contributing, but there were always others willing to take their places. Dr. Erasmus Darwin and the pottery designer and manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, the two grandfathers of Charles Darwin, were among those who contributed to his support. 

Silver Trees. In the eighteenth century, silver solutions were reduced in various ways to form the tree of Diana, which Erasmus Darwin described as follows ... 

The Works of Charles Darwin Volume 29 Erasmus Darwin Preface (p. 44)... 

In Birmingham and its environs Hutton met other members of the Lunar Society, including Matthew Boulton and Erasmus Darwin. On a visit to the latter in Lichfield, Hutton used Darwin s house as a base for expeditions into Derbyshire and also participated in an experiment with an airgun and thermometer to demonstrate how the expansion of air cools it.31 Darwin was later to make use of this fact in explaining processes of devaporation in clouds and in steam engines, as we will see in a moment. 

Another member of the Lunar Society, Erasmus Darwin, took an abiding interest in the steam engine, an interest at once visionary, poetic and scientific. We find in sources produced by and linked to him, further confirmation of the chemical nature of the invention as seen by Boulton and Watt s contemporaries and also of its close association with meteorological ideas and understandings. 

Darwin to Watt, 20 November 1789, in D. King-Hele, (ed.), The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 353-4. Darwin added, characteristically, that he wanted agreeable...gentlemanlike facts, not abstruse calculations, only fit for philosophers) For Darwin s treatment of the steam engine in his poem see Chapter 5 below. 

Erasmus Darwin to Matthew Boulton, 12 December [17]65, Archives of Soho, MS 3782/13/53/30, as transcribed in King-Hele (ed.), Collected Letters of Darwin, pp. 65-6.1 have omitted Dr. King-Hele s interpolation of at after as in his transcription of this letter. This interpolation is an understandable but I think erroneous correction or unnecessary amplification. This is so because Darwin s concern is with the co-variation of the size of the surface at which the steam is produced and the quantity of that steam. So throughout the letter he refers to quantity varying either as the upper surface of the boiling water or as the surface of the vessel in contact with the fire. The location of the production of the steam ( at.. ) is implicit in the covariation ( as... ). 

Beddoes, T., A Letter to Erasmus Darwin, M. D. on a New Method of Treating Pulmonary Consumption, and some Diseases hitherto found Incurable (Bristol Bulgin Rosser, 1793). 

King-Hele, D. (ed.), The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2007). 

Elhott P (2003) Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the origins of the evolutionary worldview in British provincial scientific culture, 1770-1850. Isis 94 1-29. 

Desmond King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin (London Faber, 1977) see also The Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1981) a new edition is currently in preparation. 

Thomas Beddoes, Hygeia, 2 5. Consumption was clearly something of a catch-all in the 1790s, but Beddoes recognized tuberculosis when he encountered it, as did Erasmus Darwin. 

Bodleian Library MS Dep. C134/2 Darwin to Beddoes, 6 February 1794, published in Letters of Erasmus Darwin, 94C. 

Birmingham Record Office, MS 3219/4/28 6 Beddoes to Watt, 25 June 1794 MS 3219/4/28 36, Darwin to Watt, 3 July 1794, published in Letters of Erasmus Darwin 94J Darwin to Beddoes, July 1794, in ibid. 94K Darwin to Watt, 17 August 1794, in ibid., 94P. 

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