On song! Bumper price paid at auction for Charles Darwin letter about Nightingale migration

                                                               

A LETTER in which Charles Darwin inquires about Nightingale migration has this month sold at a London auction for an astonishing £22,860.

The sum is way higher than the pre-sale estimate of auction house Christie's that it would fetch  between £4,000 and £6,000.

Written from Beckenham in Kent, in May 1869, the three-page letter is addressed to ornithologist John Jenner Weir (1822-94) with whom Darwin (1804-81, author  of Origin of Species,  regularly corresponded about his sightings.

It includes a reference to a Darwin associate and collaborator, John Gould, also a notable author as well as being an illustrator 

A section reads: "'Mr Gould told me that male nightingales immigrate before the females; and that he had ascertained this was the case with the snipe and he believed that it was general with migratory birds.

" There is a man in or near Brighton, who sometimes writes in the Ibis, and who I imagine may be a bird-stuffer, and who seems to have paid special attention to migratory birds.

"I fear that the migratory birds are not largely caught by the bird-catchers, and the South coast would be the best place for observation."

According to a note in the Christie's sale catalogue, Darwin was "particularly interested in the role of migratory birds in dispersing plant and animal species over long distances."

The vendor of the framed letter is believed to have been a Japanese collector, but it is not known who bought it and whether it will remain in this country.