More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

C >> Charles Darwin >> More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44

Dr. Freke has sent me his paper, which is far beyond my scope--something
like the capital quiz in the "Anti-Jacobin" on my grandfather, which was
quoted in the "Quarterly Review."

LETTER 117. TO D.T. ANSTED.

(117/1. The following letter was published in Professor Meldola's
presidential address to the Entomological Society, 1897, and to him we are
indebted for a copy.)

15, Marine Parade, Eastbourne, October 27th [1860].

As I am away from home on account of my daughter's health, I do not know
your address, and fly this at random, and it is of very little consequence
if it never reaches you.

I have just been reading the greater part of your "Geological Gossip," and
have found part very interesting; but I want to express my admiration at
the clear and correct manner in which you have given a sketch of Natural
Selection. You will think this very slight praise; but I declare that the
majority of readers seem utterly incapable of comprehending my long
argument. Some of the reviewers, who have servilely stuck to my
illustrations and almost to my words, have been correct, but
extraordinarily few others have succeeded. I can see plainly, by your new
illustrations and manner and order of putting the case, that you thoroughly
comprehend the subject. I assure you this is most gratifying to me, and it
is the sole way in which the public can be indoctrinated. I am often in
despair in making the generality of NATURALISTS even comprehend me.
Intelligent men who are not naturalists and have not a bigoted idea of the
term species, show more clearness of mind. I think that you have done the
subject a real service, and I sincerely thank you. No doubt there will be
much error found in my book, but I have great confidence that the main view
will be, in time, found correct; for I find, without exception, that those
naturalists who went at first one inch with me now go a foot or yard with
me.

This note obviously requires no answer.

LETTER 118. TO H.W. BATES.
Down, November 22nd [1860].

I thank you sincerely for writing to me and for your very interesting
letter. Your name has for very long been familiar to me, and I have heard
of your zealous exertions in the cause of Natural History. But I did not
know that you had worked with high philosophical questions before your
mind. I have an old belief that a good observer really means a good
theorist (118/1. For an opposite opinion, see Letter 13.), and I fully
expect to find your observations most valuable. I am very sorry to hear
that your health is shattered; but I trust under a healthy climate it may
be restored. I can sympathise with you fully on this score, for I have had
bad health for many years, and fear I shall ever remain a confirmed
invalid. I am delighted to hear that you, with all your large practical
knowledge of Natural History, anticipated me in many respects and concur
with me. As you say, I have been thoroughly well attacked and reviled
(especially by entomologists--Westwood, Wollaston, and A. Murray have all
reviewed and sneered at me to their hearts' content), but I care nothing
about their attacks; several really good judges go a long way with me, and
I observe that all those who go some little way tend to go somewhat
further. What a fine philosophical mind your friend Mr. Wallace has, and
he has acted, in relation to me, like a true man with a noble spirit. I
see by your letter that you have grappled with several of the most
difficult problems, as it seems to me, in Natural History--such as the
distinctions between the different kinds of varieties, representative
species, etc. Perhaps I shall find some facts in your paper on
intermediate varieties in intermediate regions, on which subject I have
found remarkably little information. I cannot tell you how glad I am to
hear that you have attended to the curious point of equatorial
refrigeration. I quite agree that it must have been small; yet the more I
go into that question the more convinced I feel that there was during the
Glacial period some migration from north to south. The sketch in the
"Origin" gives a very meagre account of my fuller MS. essay on this
subject.

I shall be particularly obliged for a copy of your paper when published
(118/2. Probably a paper by Bates entitled "Contributions to an Insect
Fauna of the Amazon Valley" ("Trans. Entomol. Soc." Volume V., page 335,
1858-61).); and if any suggestions occur to me (not that you require any)
or questions, I will write and ask.

I have at once to prepare a new edition of the "Origin," (118/3. Third
Edition, March, 1861.), and I will do myself the pleasure of sending you a
copy; but it will be only very slightly altered.

Cases of neuter ants, divided into castes, with intermediate gradations
(which I imagine are rare) interest me much. See "Origin" on the driver-
ant, page 241 (please look at the passage.)

LETTER 119. TO T.H. HUXLEY.

(119/1. This refers to the first number of the new series of the "Natural
History Review," 1861, a periodical which Huxley was largely instrumental
in founding, and of which he was an editor (see Letter 107). The first
series was published in Dublin, and ran to seven volumes between 1854 and
1860. The new series came to an end in 1865.)

Down, January, 3rd [1861].

I have just finished No. 1 of the "Natural History Review," and must
congratulate you, as chiefly concerned, on its excellence. The whole seems
to me admirable,--so admirable that it is impossible that other numbers
should be so good, but it would be foolish to expect it. I am rather a
croaker, and I do rather fear that the merit of the articles will be above
the run of common readers and subscribers. I have been much interested by
your brain article. (119/2. The "Brain article" of Huxley bore the title
"On the Zoological Relations of Man with the Lower Animals," and appeared
in No. 1, January 1861, page 67. It was Mr. Huxley's vindication of the
unqualified contradiction given by him at the Oxford meeting of the British
Association to Professor Owen's assertions as to the difference between the
brains of man and the higher apes. The sentence omitted by Owen in his
lecture before the University of Cambridge was a footnote on the close
structural resemblance between Homo and Pithecus, which occurs in his paper
on the characters of the class Mammalia in the "Linn. Soc. Journal," Volume
II., 1857, page 20. According to Huxley the lecture, or "Essay on the
Classification of the Mammalia," was, with this omission, a reprint of the
Linnean paper. In "Man's Place in Nature," page 110, note, Huxley remarks:
"Surely it is a little singular that the 'anatomist,' who finds it
'difficult' to 'determine the difference' between Homo and Pithecus, should
yet range them, on anatomical grounds, in distinct sub-classes.") What a
complete and awful smasher (and done like a "buttered angel") it is for
Owen! What a humbug he is to have left out the sentence in the lecture
before the orthodox Cambridge dons! I like Lubbock's paper very much: how
well he writes. (119/3. Sir John Lubbock's paper was a review of Leydig
on the Daphniidae. M'Donnell's was "On the Homologies of the Electric
Organ of the Torpedo," afterwards used in the "Origin" (see Edition VI.,
page 150).) M'Donnell, of course, pleases me greatly. But I am very
curious to know who wrote the Protozoa article: I shall hear, if it be not
a secret, from Lubbock. It strikes me as very good, and, by Jove, how Owen
is shown up--"this great and sound reasoner"! By the way, this reminds me
of a passage which I have just observed in Owen's address at Leeds, which a
clever reviewer might turn into good fun. He defines (page xc) and further
on amplifies his definition that creation means "a process he knows not
what." And in a previous sentence he says facts shake his confidence that
the Apteryx in New Zealand and Red Grouse in England are "distinct
creations." So that he has no confidence that these birds were produced by
"processes he knows not what!" To what miserable inconsistencies and
rubbish this truckling to opposite opinions leads the great generaliser!
(119/4. In the "Historical Sketch," which forms part of the later editions
of the "Origin," Mr. Darwin made use of Owen's Leeds Address in the manner
sketched above. See "Origin," Edition VI., page xvii.)

Farewell: I heartily rejoice in the clear merit of this number. I hope
Mrs. Huxley goes on well. Etty keeps much the same, but has not got up to
the same pitch as when you were here. Farewell.

LETTER 120. TO JAMES LAMONT.
Down, February 25th [1861].

I am extremely much obliged for your very kind present of your beautiful
work, "Seasons with the Sea-Horses;" and I have no doubt that I shall find
much interesting from so careful and acute an observer as yourself.
(120/1. "Seasons with the Sea-Horses; or, Sporting Adventures in the
Northern Seas." London, 1861. Mr. Lamont (loc. cit., page 273) writes:
"The polar bear seems to me to be nothing more than a variety of the bears
inhabiting Northern Europe, Asia, and America; and it surely requires no
very great stretch of the imagination to suppose that this variety was
originally created, not as we see him now, but by individuals of Ursus
arctos in Siberia, who, finding their means of subsistence running short,
and pressed by hunger, ventured on the ice and caught some seals. These
individuals would find that they could make a subsistence in this way, and
would take up their residence on the shore and gradually take to a life on
the ice...Then it stands to reason that those individuals who might happen
to be palest in colour would have the best chance of succeeding in
surprising seals...The process of Natural Selection would do the rest, and
Ursus arctos would in the course of a few thousands, or a few millions of
years, be transformed into the variety at present known as Ursus
maritimus." The author adds the following footnote (op. cit., page 275):
"It will be obvious to any one that I follow Mr. Darwin in these remarks;
and, although the substance of this chapter was written in Spitzbergen,
before "The Origin of Species" was published, I do not claim any
originality for my views; and I also cheerfully acknowledge that, but for
the publication of that work in connection with the name of so
distinguished a naturalist, I never would have ventured to give to the
world my own humble opinions on the subject.")

P.S. I have just been cutting the leaves of your book, and have been very
much pleased and surprised at your note about what you wrote in
Spitzbergen. As you thought it out independently, it is no wonder that you
so clearly understand Natural Selection, which so few of my reviewers do or
pretend not to do.

I never expected to see any one so heroically bold as to defend my bear
illustration. (120/2. "In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne
swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, almost like a
whale, insects in the water."--"Origin," Edition VI., page 141. See Letter
110.) But a man who has done all that you have done must be bold! It is
laughable how often I have been attacked and misrepresented about this
bear. I am much pleased with your remarks, and thank you cordially for
coming to the rescue.

LETTER 121. TO W.B. TEGETMEIER.

(121/1. Mr. Darwin's letters to Mr. Tegetmeier, taken as a whole, give a
striking picture of the amount of assistance which Darwin received from him
during many years. Some citations from these letters given in "Life and
Letters," II., pages 52, 53, show how freely and generously Mr. Tegetmeier
gave his help, and how much his co-operation was valued.

The following letter is given as an example of the questions on which
Darwin sought Mr. Tegetmeier's opinion and guidance.)

Down, March 22 [1861].

I ought to have answered your last note sooner; but I have been very busy.
How wonderfully successful you have been in breeding Pouters! You have a
good right to be proud of your accuracy of eye and judgment. I am in the
thick of poultry, having just commenced, and shall be truly grateful for
the skulls, if you can send them by any conveyance to the Nag's Head next
Thursday.

You ask about vermilion wax: positively it was not in the state of comb,
but in solid bits and cakes, which were thrown with other rubbish not far
from my hives. You can make any use of the fact you like. Combs could be
concentrically and variously coloured and dates recorded by giving for a
few days wax darkly coloured with vermilion and indigo, and I daresay other
substances. You ask about my crossed fowls, and this leads me to make a
proposition to you, which I hope cannot be offensive to you. I trust you
know me too well to think that I would propose anything objectionable to
the best of my judgment. The case is this: for my object of treating
poultry I must give a sketch of several breeds, with remarks on various
points. I do not feel strong on the subject. Now, when my MS. is fairly
copied in an excellent handwriting, would you read it over, which would
take you at most an hour or two, and make comments in pencil on it; and
accept, like a barrister, a fee, we will say, of a couple of guineas. This
would be a great assistance to me, specially if you would allow me to put a
note, stating that you, a distinguished judge and fancier, had read it
over. I would state that you doubted or concurred, as each case might be,
of course striking out what you were sure was incorrect. There would be
little new in my MS. to you; but if by chance you used any of my facts or
conclusions before I published, I should wish you to state that they were
on my authority; otherwise I shall be accused of stealing from you. There
will be little new, except that perhaps I have consulted some out-of-the-
way books, and have corresponded with some good authorities. Tell me
frankly what you think of this; but unless you will oblige me by accepting
remuneration, I cannot and will not give you such trouble. I have little
doubt that several points will arise which will require investigation, as I
care for many points disregarded by fanciers; and according to any time
thus spent, you will, I trust, allow me to make remuneration. I hope that
you will grant me this favour. There is one assistance which I will now
venture to beg of you--viz., to get me, if you can, another specimen of an
old white Angora rabbit. I want it dead for the skeleton; and not knocked
on the head. Secondly, I see in the "Cottage Gardener" (March 19th, page
375) there are impure half-lops with one ear quite upright and shorter than
the other lopped ear. I much want a dead one. Baker cannot get one.
Baily is looking out; but I want two specimens. Can you assist me, if you
meet any rabbit-fancier? I have had rabbits with one ear more lopped than
the other; but I want one with one ear quite upright and shorter, and the
other quite long and lopped.

LETTER 122. TO H.W. BATES.
Down, March 26th [1861].

I have read your papers with extreme interest, and I have carefully read
every word of them. (122/1. "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the
Amazon Valley." (Read March 5th and November 24th, 1860). "Entomological
Soc. Trans." V., pages 223 and 335).) They seem to me to be far richer in
facts of variation, and especially on the distribution of varieties and
subspecies, than anything which I have read. Hereafter I shall re-read
them, and hope in my future work to profit by them and make use of them.
The amount of variation has much surprised me. The analogous variation of
distinct species in the same regions strikes me as particularly curious.
The greater variability of the female sex is new to me. Your Guiana case
seems in some degree analogous, as far as plants are concerned, with the
modern plains of La Plata, which seem to have been colonised from the
north, but the species have been hardly modified. (122/2. Mr. Bates (page
349) gives reason to believe that the Guiana region should be considered "a
perfectly independent province," and that it has formed a centre "whence
radiated the species which now people the low lands on its borders.")

Would you kindly answer me two or three questions if in your power? When
species A becomes modified in another region into a well-marked form C,
but is connected with it by one (or more) gradational forms B inhabiting an
intermediate region; does this form B generally exist in equal numbers with
A and C, OR INHABIT AN EQUALLY LARGE AREA? The probability is that you
cannot answer this question, though one of your cases seems to bear on
it...

You will, I think, be glad to hear that I now often hear of naturalists
accepting my views more or less fully; but some are curiously cautious in
running the risk of any small odium in expressing their belief.

LETTER 123. TO H.W. BATES.
Down, April 4th [1861].

I have been unwell, so have delayed thanking you for your admirable letter.
I hope you will not think me presumptuous in saying how much I have been
struck with your varied knowledge, and with the decisive manner in which
you bring it to bear on each point,--a rare and most high quality, as far
as my experience goes. I earnestly hope you will find time to publish
largely: before the Linnean Society you might bring boldly out your views
on species. Have you ever thought of publishing your travels, and working
in them the less abstruse parts of your Natural History? I believe it
would sell, and be a very valuable contribution to Natural History. You
must also have seen a good deal of the natives. I know well it would be
quite unreasonable to ask for any further information from you; but I will
just mention that I am now, and shall be for a long time, writing on
domestic varieties of all animals. Any facts would be useful, especially
any showing that savages take any care in breeding their animals, or in
rejecting the bad and preserving the good; or any fancies which they may
have that one coloured or marked dog, etc., is better than another. I have
already collected much on this head, but am greedy for facts. You will at
once see their bearing on variation under domestication.

Hardly anything in your letter has pleased me more than about sexual
selection. In my larger MS. (and indeed in the "Origin" with respect to
the tuft of hairs on the breast of the cock-turkey) I have guarded myself
against going too far; but I did not at all know that male and female
butterflies haunted rather different sites. If I had to cut up myself in a
review I would have [worried?] and quizzed sexual selection; therefore,
though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how
pleased I am at what you say on your belief. This part of your letter to
me is a quintessence of richness. The fact about butterflies attracted by
coloured sepals is another good fact, worth its weight in gold. It would
have delighted the heart of old Christian C. Sprengel--now many years in
his grave.

I am glad to hear that you have specially attended to "mimetic" analogies--
a most curious subject; I hope you publish on it. I have for a long time
wished to know whether what Dr. Collingwood asserts is true--that the most
striking cases generally occur between insects inhabiting the same country.

LETTER 124. TO F.W. HUTTON.
Down, April 20th [1861].

I hope that you will permit me to thank you for sending me a copy of your
paper in "The Geologist" (124/1. In a letter to Hooker (April 23rd?, 1861)
Darwin refers to Hutton's review as "very original," and adds that Hutton
is "one of the very few who see that the change of species cannot be
directly proved..." ("Life and Letters," II., page 362). The review
appeared in "The Geologist" (afterwards known as "The Geological Magazine")
for 1861, pages 132-6 and 183-8. A letter on "Difficulties of Darwinism"
is published in the same volume of "The Geologist," page 286.), and at the
same time to express my opinion that you have done the subject a real
service by the highly original, striking, and condensed manner with which
you have put the case. I am actually weary of telling people that I do not
pretend to adduce direct evidence of one species changing into another, but
that I believe that this view in the main is correct, because so many
phenomena can be thus grouped together and explained. But it is generally
of no use; I cannot make persons see this. I generally throw in their
teeth the universally admitted theory of the undulation of light,--neither
the undulation nor the very existence of ether being proved, yet admitted
because the view explains so much. You are one of the very few who have
seen this, and have now put it most forcibly and clearly. I am much
pleased to see how carefully you have read my book, and, what is far more
important, reflected on so many points with an independent spirit. As I am
deeply interested in the subject (and I hope not exclusively under a
personal point of view) I could not resist venturing to thank you for the
right good service which you have done.

I need hardly say that this note requires no answer.

LETTER 125. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(125/1. Parts of this letter are published in "Life and Letters," II.,
page 362.)

Down, [April] 23rd, [1861].

I have been much interested by Bentham's paper in the "Natural History
Review," but it would not, of course, from familiarity, strike you as it
did me. (125/2. This refers to Bentham's paper "On the Species and Genera
of Plants, etc." "Nat. Hist. Review," April, 1861, page 133, which is
founded on, or extracted from, a paper read before the Linn. Soc., November
15th, 1858. It had been originally set down to be read on July 1st, 1858,
but gave way to the papers of Darwin and Wallace. Mr. Bentham has
described ("Life and Letters," II., page 294) how he reluctantly cancelled
the parts urging "original fixity" of specific type, and the remainder
seems not to have been published except in the above-quoted paper in the
"Nat. Hist. Review.") I liked the whole--all the facts on the nature of
close and varying species. Good Heavens! to think of the British botanists
turning up their noses and saying that he knows nothing of British plants!
I was also pleased at his remarks on classification, because it showed me
that I wrote truly on this subject in the "Origin." I saw Bentham at the
Linnean Society, and had some talk with him and Lubbock and Edgeworth,
Wallich, and several others. I asked Bentham to give us his ideas of
species; whether partially with us or dead against us, he would write
excellent matter. He made no answer, but his manner made me think he might
do so if urged--so do you attack him. Every one was speaking with
affection and anxiety of Henslow. I dined with Bell at the Linnean Club,
and liked my dinner...dining-out is such a novelty to me that I enjoyed it.
Bell has a real good heart. I liked Rolleston's paper, but I never read
anything so obscure and not self-evident as his "canons." (125/3. See
"Nat. Hist. Review," 1861, page 206. The paper is "On the Brain of the
Orang Utang," and forms part of the bitter controversy of this period to
which reference occurs in letters to Huxley and elsewhere in these volumes.
Rolleston's work is quoted by Huxley ("Man's Place in Nature," page 117) as
part of the crushing refutation of Owen's position. Mr. Huxley's letter
referred to above is no doubt that in the "Athenaeum," April 13th, 1861,
page 498; it is certainly severe, but to those who know Mr. Huxley's
"Succinct History of the Controversy," etc. ("Man's Place in Nature," page
113), it will not seem too severe.) I had a dim perception of the truth of
your profound remark--that he wrote in fear and trembling "of God, man, and
monkeys," but I would alter it into "God, man, Owen, and monkeys."
Huxley's letter was truculent, and I see that every one thinks it too
truculent; but in simple truth I am become quite demoniacal about Owen--
worse than Huxley; and I told Huxley that I should put myself under his
care to be rendered milder. But I mean to try and get more angelic in my
feelings; yet I never shall forget his cordial shake of the hand, when he
was writing as spitefully as he possibly could against me. But I have
always thought that you have more cause than I to be demoniacally inclined
towards him. Bell told me that Owen says that the editor mutilated his
article in the "Edinburgh Review" (125/4. This is the only instance, with
which we are acquainted, of Owen's acknowledging the authorship of the
"Edinburgh Review" article.), and Bell seemed to think it was rendered more
spiteful by the Editor; perhaps the opposite view is as probable. Oh,
dear! this does not look like becoming more angelic in my temper!

I had a splendid long talk with Lyell (you may guess how splendid, for he
was many times on his knees, with elbows on the sofa) (125/5. Mr. Darwin
often spoke of Sir Charles Lyell's tendency to take curious attitudes when
excited.) on his work in France: he seems to have done capital work in
making out the age of the celt-bearing beds, but the case gets more and
more complicated. All, however, tends to greater and greater antiquity of
man. The shingle beds seem to be estuary deposits. I called on R.
Chambers at his very nice house in St. John's Wood, and had a very pleasant
half-hour's talk--he is really a capital fellow. He made one good remark
and chuckled over it: that the laymen universally had treated the
controversy on the "Essays and Reviews" as a merely professional subject,
and had not joined in it but had left it to the clergy. I shall be
anxious for your next letter about Henslow. Farewell, with sincere
sympathy, my old friend.