More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

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I was right to be cautious in supposing you in error about Siphocampylus
(no flowers were enclosed). I hope that you will make out whether the
pistil presents two definite lengths; I shall be astounded if it does. I
do not fully understand your objections to Natural Selection; if I do, I
presume they would apply with full force to, for instance, birds. Reflect
on modification of Arab-Turk horse into our English racehorse. I have had
the satisfaction to tell my publisher to send my "Journal" and "Origin" to
your address. I suspect, with your fertile mind, you will find it far
better to experiment on your own choice; but if, on reflection, you would
like to try some which interest me, I should be truly delighted, and in
this case would write in some detail. If you have the means to repeat
Gartner's experiments on variations of Verbascum or on maize (see the
"Origin"), such experiments would be pre-eminently important. I could
never get variations of Verbascum. I could suggest an experiment on
potatoes analogous with the case of Passiflora; even the case of
Passiflora, often as it has been repeated, might be with advantage
repeated. I have worked like a slave (having counted about nine thousand
seeds) on Melastoma, on the meaning of the two sets of very different
stamens, and as yet have been shamefully beaten, and I now cry for aid. I
could suggest what I believe a very good scheme (at least, Dr. Hooker
thought so) for systematic degeneration of culinary plants, and so find out
their origin; but this would be laborious and the work of years.

LETTER 152. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, 12th [December, 1862].

My good old Friend--

How kind you have been to give me so much of your time! Your letter is of
real use, and has been and shall be well considered. I am much pleased to
find that we do not differ as much as I feared. I begin my book with
saying that my chief object is to show the inordinate scale of variation; I
have especially studied all sorts of variations of the individual. On
crossing I cannot change; the more I think, the more reason I have to
believe that my conclusion would be agreed to by all practised breeders. I
also greatly doubt about variability and domestication being at all
necessarily correlative, but I have touched on this in "Origin." Plants
being identical under very different conditions has always seemed to me a
very heavy argument against what I call direct action. I think perhaps I
will take the case of 1,000 pigeons (152/1. See Letter 146.) to sum up my
volume; I will not discuss other points, but, as I have said, I shall recur
to your letter. But I must just say that if sterility be allowed to come
into play, if long-beaked be in the least degree sterile with short-beaked,
my whole case is altered. By the way, my notions on hybridity are becoming
considerably altered by my dimorphic work. I am now strongly inclined to
believe that sterility is at first a selected quality to keep incipient
species distinct. If you have looked at Lythrum you will see how pollen
can be modified merely to favour crossing; with equal readiness it could be
modified to prevent crossing.

It is this which makes me so much interested with dimorphism, etc. (152/2.
This gives a narrow impression of Darwin's interest in dimorphism. The
importance of his work was (briefly put) the proof that sterility has no
necessary connection with specific difference, but depends on sexual
differentiation independent of racial differences. See "Life and Letters,"
III., page 296. His point of view that sterility is a selected quality is
again given in a letter to Huxley ("Life and Letters," II., page 384), but
was not upheld in his later writings (see "Origin of Species," Edition VI.,
page 245). The idea of sterility being a selected quality is interesting
in connection with Romanes' theory of physiological selection. (See
Letters 209-214.))

One word more. When you pitched me head over heels by your new way of
looking at the back side of variation, I received assurance and strength by
considering monsters--due to law: horribly strange as they are, the
monsters were alive till at least when born. They differ at least as much
from the parent as any one mammal from another.

I have just finished a long, weary chapter on simple facts of variation of
cultivated plants, and am now refreshing myself with a paper on Linum for
the Linnean Society.

LETTER 153. TO W.B. TEGETMEIER.

(153/1. The following letter also bears on the question of the artificial
production of sterility.)

Down, 27th [December, 1862].

The present plan is to try whether any existing breeds happen to have
acquired accidentally any degree of sterility; but to this point hereafter.
The enclosed MS. will show what I have done and know on the subject.
Please at some future time carefully return the MS. to me. If I were going
to try again, I would prefer Turbit with Carrier or Dragon.

I will suggest an analogous experiment, which I have had for two years in
my experimental book with "be sure and try," but which, as my health gets
yearly weaker and weaker and my other work increases, I suppose I shall
never try. Permit me to add that if 5 pounds would cover the expenses of
the experiment, I should be delighted to give it, and you could publish the
result if there be any result. I crossed the Spanish cock (your bird) and
white Silk hen and got plenty of eggs and chickens; but two of them seemed
to be quite sterile. I was then sadly overdone with work, but have ever
since much reproached myself that I did not preserve and carefully test the
procreative power of these hens. Now, if you are inclined to get a Spanish
cock and a couple of white Silk hens, I shall be most grateful to hear
whether the offspring breed well: they will prove, I think, not hardy; if
they should prove sterile, which I can hardly believe, they will anyhow do
for the pot. If you do try this, how would it do to put a Silk cock to
your curious silky Cochin hen, so as to get a big silk breed; it would be
curious if you could get silky fowl with bright colours. I believe a Silk
hen crossed by any other breed never gives silky feathers. A cross from
Silk cock and Cochin Silk hen ought to give silky feathers and probably
bright colours.

I have been led lately from experiments (not published) on dimorphism to
reflect much on sterility from hybridism, and partially to change the
opinion given in "Origin." I have now letters out enquiring on the
following point, implied in the experiment, which seems to me well worth
trying, but too laborious ever to be attempted. I would ask every pigeon
and fowl fancier whether they have ever observed, in the same breed, a cock
A paired to a hen B which did not produce young. Then I would get cock A
and match it to a hen of its nearest blood; and hen B to its nearest blood.
I would then match the offspring of A (viz., a, b, c, d, e) to the
offspring of B (viz., f, g, h, i, j), and all those children which were
fertile together should be destroyed until I found one--say a, which was
not quite fertile with--say, i. Then a and i should be preserved and
paired with their parents A and B, so as to try and get two families which
would not unite together; but the members WITHIN each family being fertile
together. This would probably be quite hopeless; but he who could effect
this would, I believe, solve the problem of sterility from hybridism. If
you should ever hear of individual fowls or pigeons which are sterile
together, I should be very grateful to hear of the case. It is a parallel
case to those recorded of a man not impotent long living with a woman who
remained childless; the husband died, and the woman married again and had
plenty of children. Apparently (by no means certainly) this first man and
woman were dissimilar in their sexual organisation. I conceive it possible
that their offspring (if both had married again and both had children)
would be sexually dissimilar, like their parents, or sterile together.
Pray forgive my dreadful writing; I have been very unwell all day, and have
no strength to re-write this scrawl. I am working slowly on, and I suppose
in three or four months shall be ready.

I am sure I do not know whether any human being could understand or read
this shameful scrawl.

LETTER 154. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, December, 28th [1862].

I return enclosed: if you write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of
letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1.
Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or
parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of
proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my
God. He is so wise that he made all things." But Moollah No. 2 won the
day by pointing out that his God is "so wise that he makes all things make
themselves.") All that I said about the little book (154/2. The six
"Lectures to Working Men," published in six pamphlets and in book-form in
1863. Mr. Huxley considered that Mr. Darwin's argument required the
production by man's selection of breeds which should be mutually infertile,
and thus resemble distinct species physiologically as well as
morphologically.) is strictly my opinion; it is in every way excellent, and
cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth
your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to
decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do
not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold
saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not
understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do
not go nearly so far. We differ so much that it is no use arguing. To get
the degree of sterility you expect in recently formed varieties seems to me
simply hopeless. It seems to me almost like those naturalists who declare
they will never believe that one species turns into another till they see
every stage in process.

I have heard from Tegetmeier, and have given him the result of my crosses
of the birds which he proposes to try, and have told him how alone I think
the experiment could be tried with the faintest hope of success--namely, to
get, if possible, a case of two birds which when paired were unproductive,
yet neither impotent. For instance, I had this morning a letter with a
case of a Hereford heifer, which seemed to be, after repeated trials,
sterile with one particular and far from impotent bull, but not with
another bull. But it is too long a story--it is to attempt to make two
strains, both fertile, and yet sterile when one of one strain is crossed
with one of the other strain. But the difficulty...would be beyond
calculation. As far as I see, Tegetmeier's plan would simply test whether
two existing breeds are now in any slight degree sterile; which has already
been largely tested: not that I dispute the good of re-testing.

LETTER 155. TO HUGH FALCONER.

(155/1. The original letter is dated "December 10th," but this must, we
think, be a slip of the pen for January 10th. It contains a reference to
No. VI. of the "Lectures to Working Men" which, as Mr. Leonard Huxley is
good enough to inform us, was not delivered until December 15th, and
therefore could not have been seen by Mr. Darwin on December 10th. The
change of date makes comprehensible the reference to Falconer's paper "On
the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico
(E. Columbi, Falc.)," which appeared in the January number of the "Natural
History Review." It is true that he had seen advanced sheets of Falconer's
paper ("Life and Letters," II., page 389), but the reference here is to the
complete paper.

In the present volume we have thought it right to give some expression to
the attitude of Darwin towards Owen. Professor Owen's biographer has
clearly felt the difficulty of making a statement on Owen's attitude
towards Darwinism, and has ("Life of Sir Richard Owen," Volume II., page
92) been driven to adopt the severe indictment contained in the "Origin of
Species," Edition VI., page xviii. Darwin was by no means alone in his
distrust of Owen; and to omit altogether a reference to the conduct which
led up to the isolation of Owen among his former friends and colleagues
would be to omit a part of the history of science of the day. And since we
cannot omit to notice Darwin's point of view, it seems right to give the
facts of a typical case illustrating the feeling with which he regarded
Owen. This is all the more necessary since the recently published
biography of Sir R. Owen gives no hint, as far as we are aware, of even a
difference of opinion with other scientific men.

The account which Falconer gives in the above-mentioned paper in the "Nat.
Hist. Review" (January, 1863) would be amusing if the matter were less
serious. In 1857 Falconer described ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." XIII.) a
new species of fossil elephant from America, to which he gave the name
Elephas Columbi, a designation which was recognised and adopted by
Continental writers. In 1858 (Brit. Assoc. Leeds) Owen made use of the
name "Elephas texianus," Blake" for the species which Falconer had
previously named E. Columbi, but without referring to Falconer's
determination; he gave no authority, "thus by the established usage in
zoology producing it as his own." In 1861 Owen in his Palaeontology, 2nd
edition, 1861, describes the elephant as E. texianus, Blake. To Mr.
Blake's name is appended an asterisk which refers to a footnote to
Bollaert's "Antiquities of S. America," 2nd edition. According to Falconer
(page 46) no second edition of Bollaert had appeared at the time of writing
(August, 1862), and in the first edition (1860) he was "unable to detect
the occurrence of the name even, of E. texianus, anywhere throughout the
volume"; though Bollaert mentions the fact that he had deposited, in the
British Museum, the tooth of a fossil elephant from Texas.

In November, 1861, Blake wrote a paper in the "Geologist" in which the new
elephant no longer bears his own name as authority, but is described as
"Elephas texianus, Owen, E. Columbi, Falconer." Finally, in another paper
the name of Owen is dropped and the elephant is once more his own. As
Falconer remarks, "the usage of science does not countenance such
accommodating arrangements, when the result is to prejudice a prior right."

It may be said, no doubt, that the question who first described a given
species is a petty one; but this view has a double edge, and applies most
strongly to those who neglect the just claims of their predecessors.

Down, January 5th [1863].

I finished your Elephant paper last night, and you must let me express my
admiration at it. (155/2. "On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions
bordering the Gulf of Mexico (E. Columbi, Falc.), etc." "Nat. Hist. Rev."
1863, page 81. (Cf. Letter to Lyell. "Life and Letters," II., page 389;
also "Origin," Edition VI., page 306.) See Letter 143.) All the points
strike me as admirably worked out, and very many most interesting. I was
particularly struck with your remarks on the character of the ancient
Mammalian Fauna of N. America (155/3. Falconer, page 62. This passage is
marked in Darwin's copy.); it agrees with all I fancied was the case,
namely a temporary irruption of S. American forms into N. America, and
conversely, I chuckled a little over the specimen of M. Andium "hesitating"
between the two groups. (155/4. In speaking of the characters of Mastodon
Andium, Falconer refers to a former paper by himself ("Quart. Journ. Geol.
Soc." Volume XIII. 1857, page 313), in which he called attention "to the
exceptional character of certain specimens of M. Andium, as if hesitating
between [the groups] Tetralophodon and Trilophodon" (ibid., page 100).) I
have been assured by Mr. Wallace that abundant Mastodon remains have been
found at Timor, and that is rather close to Australia. I rejoice that you
have smashed that case. (155/5. In the paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review"
(loc. cit.) Falconer writes: "It seems more probable that some
unintentional error has got mixed up with the history of this remarkable
fossil; and until further confirmatory evidence is adduced, of an
unimpeachable character, faith cannot be reposed in the reality of the
asserted Australian Mastodon" (page 101).) It is indeed a grand paper. I
will say nothing more about your allusions to me, except that they have
pleased me quite as much in print as in MS. You must have worked very
hard; the labour must have been extreme, but I do hope that you will have
health and strength to go on. You would laugh if you could see how
indignant all Owen's mean conduct about E. Columbi made me. (155/6. See
Letter 157.) I did not get to sleep till past 3 o'clock. How well you
lash him, firmly and severely, with unruffled temper, as if you were
performing a simple duty. The case is come to such a pass, that I think
every man of science is bound to show his feelings by some overt act, and I
shall watch for a fitting opportunity.

P.S.--I have kept back for a day the enclosed owing to the arrival of your
most interesting letter. I knew it was a mere chance whether you could
inform me on the points required; but no one other person has so often
responded to my miscellaneous queries. I believe I have now in my
greenhouse L. trigynum (155/7. Linum trigynum.), which came up from seed
purchased as L. flavum, from which it is wholly different in foliage. I
have just sent in a paper on Dimorphism of Linum to the Linnean Society
(155/8. "On the Existence of the Forms, and on their reciprocal Sexual
Relation, in several species of the genus Linum.--"Journ. Linn. Soc."
Volume VII., page 69, 1864.), and so I do not doubt your memory is right
about L. trigynum: the functional difference in the two forms of Linum is
really wonderful. I assure you I quite long to see you and a few others in
London; it is not so much the eczema which has taken the epidermis a dozen
times clean off; but I have been knocked up of late with extraordinary
facility, and when I shall be able to come up I know not. I particularly
wish to hear about the wondrous bird: the case has delighted me, because
no group is so isolated as Birds. I much wish to hear when we meet which
digits are developed; when examining birds two or three years ago, I
distinctly remember writing to Lyell that some day a fossil bird would be
found with the end of wing cloven, i.e. the bastard-wing and other part,
both well developed. Thanks for Von Martius, returned by this post, which
I was glad to see. Poor old Wagner (Probably Johann Andreas Wagner, author
of "Zur Feststellung des Artbegriffes, mit besonderer Bezugnahme auf die
Ansichten von Nathusius, Darwin, Is. Geoffroy and Agassiz," "Munchen
Sitzungsb." (1861), page 301, and of numerous papers on zoological and
palaeozoological subjects.) always attacked me in a proper spirit, and sent
me two or three little brochures, and I thanked him cordially. The Germans
seem much stirred up on the subject. I received by the same post almost a
little volume on the "Origin."

I cannot work above a couple of hours daily, and this plays the deuce with
me.

P.S. 2nd.--I have worked like a slave and been baffled like a slave in
trying to make out the meaning of two very different sets of stamens in
some Melastomaceae. (155/9. Several letters on the Melastomaceae occur in
our Botanical section.) I must tell you one fact. I counted 9,000 seeds,
one by one, from my artificially fertilised pods. There is something very
odd, but I am as yet beaten. Plants from two pollens grow at different
rates! Now, what I want to know is, whether in individuals of the same
species, growing together, you have ever noticed any difference in the
position of the pistil or in the size and colour of the stamens?

LETTER 156. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, December 18th [1862].

I have read Nos. IV, and V. (156/1. "On our Knowledge of the Causes of
the Phenomena of Organic Nature," being six Lectures to Working Men
delivered at the Museum of Practical Geology by Prof. Huxley, 1863. These
lectures, which were given once a week from November 10th, 1862, onwards,
were printed from the notes of Mr. J.A. Mays, a shorthand writer, who asked
permission to publish them on his own account; Mr. Huxley stating in a
prefatory "Notice" that he had no leisure to revise the lectures.) They
are simply perfect. They ought to be largely advertised; but it is very
good in me to say so, for I threw down No. IV. with this reflection, "What
is the good of writing a thundering big book, when everything is in this
green little book, so despicable for its size?" In the name of all that is
good and bad, I may as well shut up shop altogether. You put capitally and
most simply and clearly the relation of animals and plants to each other at
page 122.

Be careful about Fantails: their tail-feathers are fixed in a radiating
position, but they can depress and elevate them. I remember in a pigeon-
book seeing withering contempt expressed at some naturalist for not knowing
this important point! Page 111 (156/2. The reference is to the original
little green paper books in which the lectures first appeared; the paging
in the bound volume dated 1863 is slightly different. The passage here is,
"...If you couple a male and female hybrid...the result is that in ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred you will get no offspring at all." Darwin
maintains elsewhere that Huxley, from not knowing the botanical evidence,
made too much of this point. See "Life and Letters," II., page 384.) seems
a little too strong--viz., ninety-nine out of a hundred, unless you except
plants.

Page 118: You say the answer to varieties when crossed being at all
sterile is "absolutely a negative." (156/3. Huxley, page 112: "Can we
find any approximation to this [sterility of hybrids] in the different
races known to be produced by selective breeding from a common stock? Up
to the present time the answer to that question is absolutely a negative
one.") Do you mean to say that Gartner lied, after experiments by the
hundred (and he a hostile witness), when he showed that this was the case
with Verbascum and with maize (and here you have selected races): does
Kolreuter lie when he speaks about the varieties of tobacco? My God, is
not the case difficult enough, without its being, as I must think, falsely
made more difficult? I believe it is my own fault--my d--d candour: I
ought to have made ten times more fuss about these most careful
experiments. I did put it stronger in the third edition of the "Origin."
If you have a new edition, do consider your second geological section: I
do not dispute the truth of your statement; but I maintain that in almost
every case the gravel would graduate into the mud; that there would not be
a hard, straight line between the mass of gravel and mud; that the gravel,
in crawling inland, would be separated from the underlying beds by oblique
lines of stratification. A nice idea of the difficulty of Geology your
section would give to a working man! Do show your section to Ramsay, and
tell him what I say; and if he thinks it a fair section for a beginner I am
shut up, and "will for ever hold my tongue." Good-night.

LETTER 157. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down, [January] 10th [1863].

You will be weary of notes from me about the little book of yours. It is
lucky for me that I expressed, before reading No. VI. (157/1. "Lectures to
Working Men," No. VI., is a critical examination of the position of the
"Origin of Species" in relation to the complete theory of the "causes of
the phenomena of organic nature."), my opinion of its absolute excellence,
and of its being well worth wide distribution and worth correction (not
that I see where you could improve), if you thought it worth your valuable
time. Had I read No. VI., even a rudiment of modesty would, or ought to,
have stopped me saying so much. Though I have been well abused, yet I have
had so much praise, that I have become a gourmand, both as to capacity and
taste; and I really did not think that mortal man could have tickled my
palate in the exquisite manner with which you have done the job. So I am
an old ass, and nothing more need be said about this. I agree entirely
with all your reservations about accepting the doctrine, and you might have
gone further with further safety and truth. Of course I do not wholly
agree about sterility. I hate beyond all things finding myself in
disagreement with any capable judge, when the premises are the same; and
yet this will occasionally happen. Thinking over my former letter to you,
I fancied (but I now doubt) that I had partly found out the cause of our
disagreement, and I attributed it to your naturally thinking most about
animals, with which the sterility of the hybrids is much more conspicuous
than the lessened fertility of the first cross. Indeed, this could hardly
be ascertained with mammals, except by comparing the products of [their]
whole life; and, as far as I know, this has only been ascertained in the
case of the horse and ass, which do produce fewer offspring in [their]
lifetime than in pure breeding. In plants the test of first cross seems as
fair as test of sterility of hybrids. And this latter test applies, I will
maintain to the death, to the crossing of varieties of Verbascum, and
varieties, selected varieties, of Zea. (157/2. See Letter 156.) You will
say Go to the Devil and hold your tongue. No, I will not hold my tongue;
for I must add that after going, for my present book, all through domestic
animals, I have come to the conclusion that there are almost certainly
several cases of two or three or more species blended together and now
perfectly fertile together. Hence I conclude that there must be something
in domestication,--perhaps the less stable conditions, the very cause which
induces so much variability,--which eliminates the natural sterility of
species when crossed. If so, we can see how unlikely that sterility should
arise between domestic races. Now I will hold my tongue. Page 143: ought
not "Sanscrit" to be "Aryan"? What a capital number the last "Natural
History Review" is! That is a grand paper by Falconer. I cannot say how
indignant Owen's conduct about E. Columbi has made me. I believe I hate
him more than you do, even perhaps more than good old Falconer does. But I
have bubbled over to one or two correspondents on this head, and will say
no more. I have sent Lubbock a little review of Bates' paper in "Linn.
Transact." (157/3. The unsigned review of Mr. Bates' work on mimetic
butterflies appeared in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (1863), page 219.) which L.
seems to think will do for your "Review." Do inaugurate a great
improvement, and have pages cut, like the Yankees do; I will heap blessings
on your head. Do not waste your time in answering this.