More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

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LETTER 158. TO JOHN LUBBOCK [LORD AVEBURY].
Down, January 23rd [1863].

I have no criticism, except one sentence not perfectly smooth. I think
your introductory remarks very striking, interesting, and novel. (158/1.
"On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera) dimidiatum, Part I. By John
Lubbock. "Trans. Linn. Soc." Volume XXIV., pages 61-78, 1864 [Read January
15th, 1863].) They interested me the more, because the vaguest thoughts of
the same kind had passed through my head; but I had no idea that they could
be so well developed, nor did I know of exceptions. Sitaris and Meloe
(158/2. Sitaris and Meloe, two genera of coleopterous insects, are
referred to by Lubbock (op. cit., pages 63-64) as "perhaps...the most
remarkable cases...among the Coleoptera" of curious and complicated
metamorphoses.) seem very good. You have put the whole case of
metamorphosis in a new light; I dare say what you remark about poverty of
fresh-water is very true. (158/3. "We cannot but be struck by the poverty
of the fresh-water fauna when compared with that of the ocean" (op. cit.,
page 64).) I think you might write a memoir on fresh-water productions. I
suggest that the key-note is that land-productions are higher and have
advantage in general over marine; and consequently land-productions have
generally been modified into fresh-water productions, instead of marine
productions being directly changed into fresh-water productions, as at
first seems more probable, as the chance of immigration is always open from
sea to rivers and ponds.

My talk with you did me a deal of good, and I enjoyed it much.

LETTER 159. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, January 13th [1863].

I send a very imperfect answer to [your] question, which I have written on
foreign paper to save you copying, and you can send when you write to
Thomson in Calcutta. Hereafter I shall be able to answer better your
question about qualities induced in individuals being inherited; gout in
man--loss of wool in sheep (which begins in the first generation and takes
two or three to complete); probably obesity (for it is rare with poor);
probably obesity and early maturity in short-horn cattle, etc., etc.

LETTER 160. TO A. DE CANDOLLE.
Down, January 14th [1863].

I thank you most sincerely for sending me your Memoir. (160/1. Etude sur
l'Espece a l'occasion d'une revision de la Famille des Cupuliferes.
"Biblioth. Univ. (Arch. des Sc. Phys. et Nat.)," Novembre 1862.) I have
read it with the liveliest interest, as is natural for me; but you have the
art of making subjects, which might be dry, run easily. I have been fairly
astonished at the amount of individual variability in the oaks. I never
saw before the subject in any department of nature worked out so carefully.
What labour it must have cost you! You spoke in one letter of advancing
years; but I am very sure that no one would have suspected that you felt
this. I have been interested with every part; though I am so unfortunate
as to differ from most of my contemporaries in thinking that the vast
continental extensions (160/2. See Letters 47, 48.) of Forbes, Heer, and
others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence, but are opposed
to much weighty evidence. You refer to my work in the kindest and most
generous spirit. I am fully satisfied at the length in belief to which you
go, and not at all surprised at the prudent reservations which you make. I
remember well how many years it cost me to go round from old beliefs. It
is encouraging to me to observe that everyone who has gone an inch with me,
after a period goes a few more inches or even feet. But the great point,
as it seems to me, is to give up the immutability of specific forms; as
long as they are thought immutable, there can be no real progress in
"Epiontology." (160/3. See De Candolle, loc. cit., page 67: he defines
"Epiontologie" as the study of the distribution and succession of organised
beings from their origin up to the present time. At present Epiontology is
divided into geography and palaeontology, "mais cette division trop inegale
et a limites bien vagues disparaitra probablement.") It matters very
little to any one except myself, whether I am a little more or less wrong
on this or that point; in fact, I am sure to be proved wrong in many
points. But the subject will have, I am convinced, a grand future.
Considering that birds are the most isolated group in the animal kingdom,
what a splendid case is this Solenhofen bird-creature with its long tail
and fingers to its wings! I have lately been daily and hourly using and
quoting your "Geographical Botany" in my book on "Variation under
Domestication."

LETTER 161. TO HORACE DOBELL.
Down, February 16th [1863].

Absence from home and consequent idleness are the causes that I have not
sooner thanked you for your very kind present of your Lectures. (161/1.
"On the Germs and Vestiges of Disease," (London) 1861.) Your reasoning
seems quite satisfactory (though the subject is rather beyond my limit of
thought and knowledge) on the V.M.F. not being "a given quantity." (161/2.
"It has been too common to consider the force exhibited in the operations
of life (the V.M.F.) as a given quantity, to which no accessions can be
made, but which is apportioned to each living being in quantity sufficient
for its necessities, according to some hidden law" (op. cit., page 41.)
And I can see that the conditions of life must play a most important part
in allowing this quantity to increase, as in the budding of a tree, etc.
How far these conditions act on "the forms of organic life" (page 46) I do
not see clearly. In fact, no part of my subject has so completely puzzled
me as to determine what effect to attribute to (what I vaguely call) the
direct action of the conditions of life. I shall before long come to this
subject, and must endeavour to come to some conclusion when I have got the
mass of collected facts in some sort of order in my mind. My present
impression is that I have underrated this action in the "Origin." I have
no doubt when I go through your volume I shall find other points of
interest and value to me. I have already stumbled on one case (about which
I want to consult Mr. Paget)--namely, on the re-growth of supernumerary
digits. (161/3. See Letters 178, 270.) You refer to "White on
Regeneration, etc., 1785." I have been to the libraries of the Royal and
the Linnean Societies, and to the British Museum, where the librarians got
out your volume and made a special hunt, and could discover no trace of
such a book. Will you grant me the favour of giving me any clue, where I
could see the book? Have you it? if so, and the case is given briefly,
would you have the great kindness to copy it? I much want to know all
particulars. One case has been given me, but with hardly minute enough
details, of a supernumerary little finger which has already been twice cut
off, and now the operation will soon have to be done for the third time. I
am extremely much obliged for the genealogical table; the fact of the two
cousins not, as far as yet appears, transmitting the peculiarity is
extraordinary, and must be given by me.

LETTER 162. TO C. LYELL.
[February 17th, 1863.]

The same post that brought the enclosed brought Dana's pamphlet on the same
subject. (162/1. The pamphlet referred to was published in "Silliman's
Journal," Volume XXV., 1863, pages 65 and 71, also in the "Annals and
Magazine of Natural History," Volume XI., pages 207-14, 1863: "On the
Higher Subdivisions in the Classification of Mammals." In this paper Dana
maintains the view that "Man's title to a position by himself, separate
from the other mammals in classification, appears to be fixed on structural
as well as physical grounds" (page 210). His description is as follows:--

I. ARCHONTIA (vel DIPODA) Man (alone).

II. MEGASTHENA. III. MICROSTHENA.
Quadrumana. Cheiroptera.
Carnivora. Insectivora.
Herbivora. Rodentia.
Mutilata. Bruta (Edentata).

IV. OOTICOIDEA.
Marsupialia.
Monotremata.)

The whole seems to me utterly wild. If there had not been the foregone
wish to separate men, I can never believe that Dana or any one would have
relied on so small a distinction as grown man not using fore-limbs for
locomotion, seeing that monkeys use their limbs in all other respects for
the same purpose as man. To carry on analogous principles (for they are
not identical, in crustacea the cephalic limbs are brought close to mouth)
from crustacea to the classification of mammals seems to me madness. Who
would dream of making a fundamental distinction in birds, from fore-limbs
not being used at all in [some] birds, or used as fins in the penguin, and
for flight in other birds?

I get on slowly with your grand work, for I am overwhelmed with odds and
ends and letters.

LETTER 163. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(163/1. The following extract refers to Owen's paper in the "Linn. Soc.
Journal," June, 1857, in which the classification of the Mammalia by
cerebral characters was proposed. In spite of the fact that men and apes
are placed in distinct Sub-Classes, Owen speaks (in the foot-note of which
Huxley made such telling effect) of the determination of the difference
between Homo and Pithecus as the anatomist's difficulty. (See Letter
119.))

July 5th, 1857.

What a capital number of the "Linnean Journal!" Owen's is a grand paper;
but I cannot swallow Man making a division as distinct from a chimpanzee as
an Ornithorhynchus from a horse; I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to
this? (163/2. According to Owen the sub-class Archencephala contains only
the genus Homo: the Gyrencephala contains both chimpanzee and horse, the
Lyencephala contains Ornithorhynchus.)

LETTER 164. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
Down [February?] 26th, 1863.

I have just finished with very great interest "Man's Place." (164/1.
"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," 1863 (preface dated January 1863).)
I never fail to admire the clearness and condensed vigour of your style, as
one calls it, but really of your thought. I have no criticisms; nor is it
likely that I could have. But I think you could have added some
interesting matter on the character or disposition of the young ourangs
which have been kept in France and England. I should have thought you
might have enlarged a little on the later embryological changes in man and
on his rudimentary structure, tail as compared with tail of higher monkeys,
intermaxillary bone, false ribs, and I daresay other points, such as
muscles of ears, etc., etc. I was very much struck with admiration at the
opening pages of Part II. (and oh! what a delicious sneer, as good as a
dessert, at page 106) (164/2. Huxley, op. cit., page 106. After saying
that "there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of
animals in general which has any scientific existence--that propounded by
Mr. Darwin," and after a few words on Lamarck, he goes on: "And though I
have heard of the announcement of a formula touching 'the ordained
continuous becoming of organic forms,' it is obvious that it is the first
duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-qua-versal
proposition of this kind, which may be read backwards or forwards, or
sideways, with exactly the same amount of significance, does not really
exist, though it may seem to do so." The "formula" in question is
Owen's.): but my admiration is unbounded at pages 109 to 112. I declare I
never in my life read anything grander. Bacon himself could not have
charged a few paragraphs with more condensed and cutting sense than you
have done. It is truly grand. I regret extremely that you could not, or
did not, end your book (not that I mean to say a word against the
Geological History) with these pages. With a book, as with a fine day, one
likes it to end with a glorious sunset. I congratulate you on its
publication; but do not be disappointed if it does not sell largely: parts
are highly scientific, and I have often remarked that the best books
frequently do not get soon appreciated: certainly large sale is no proof
of the highest merit. But I hope it may be widely distributed; and I am
rejoiced to see in your note to Miss Rhadamanthus (164/3. This refers to
Mr. Darwin's daughter (now Mrs. Litchfield), whom Mr. Huxley used to laugh
at for the severity of her criticisms.) that a second thousand is called
for of the little book. What a letter that is of Owen's in the "Athenaeum"
(164/4. A letter by Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, replying
to strictures on his treatment of the brain question, which had appeared in
Lyell's "Antiquity of Man."); how cleverly he will utterly muddle and
confound the public. Indeed he quite muddled me, till I read again your
"concise statement" (164/5. This refers to a section (pages 113-18) in
"Man's Place in Nature," headed "A succinct History of the Controversy
respecting the Cerebral Structure of Man and the Apes." Huxley follows the
question from Owen's attempt to classify the mammalia by cerebral
characters, published by the "Linn. Soc." in 1857, up to his revival of the
subject at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1862. It is
a tremendous indictment of Owen, and seems to us to conclude not
unfittingly with a citation from Huxley's article in the "Medical Times,"
October 11th, 1862. Huxley here points out that special investigations
have been made into the question at issue "during the last two years" by
Allen Thomson, Rolleston, Marshall, Flower, Schroeder van der Kolk and
Vrolik, and that "all these able and conscientious observers" have
testified to the accuracy of his statements, "while not a single anatomist,
great or small, has supported Professor Owen." He sums up the case once
more, and concludes: "The question has thus become one of personal
veracity. For myself I will accept no other issue than this, grave as it
is, to the present controversy.") (which is capitally clear), and then I
saw that my suspicion was true that he has entirely changed his ground to
size of Brain. How candid he shows himself to have taken the slipped
Brain! (164/6. Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, admits that
in the brain which he used in illustration of his statements "the cerebral
hemispheres had glided forward and apart behind so as to expose a portion
of the cerebellum.") I am intensely curious to see whether Lyell will
answer. (164/7. Lyell's answer was in the "Athenaeum" March 7th, 1863.)
Lyell has been, I fear, rather rash to enter on a subject on which he of
course knows nothing by himself. By heavens, Owen will shake himself, when
he sees what an antagonist he has made for himself in you. With hearty
admiration, Farewell.

I am fearfully disappointed at Lyell's excessive caution (164/8. In the
"Antiquity of Man": see "Life and Letters," III., page 8.) in expressing
any judgment on Species or [on the] origin of Man.

LETTER 165. TO JOHN SCOTT.
Down, March 6th, 1863.

I thank you for your criticisms on the "Origin," and which I have not time
to discuss; but I cannot help doubting, from your expression of an
"INNATE...selective principle," whether you fully comprehend what is meant
by Natural Selection. Certainly when you speak of weaker (i.e. less well
adapted) forms crossing with the stronger, you take a widely different view
from what I do on the struggle for existence; for such weaker forms could
not exist except by the rarest chance. With respect to utility, reflect
that 99/100ths part of the structure of each being is due to inheritance of
formerly useful structures. Pray read what I have said on "correlation."
Orchids ought to show us how ignorant we are of what is useful. No doubt
hundreds of cases could be advanced of which no explanation could be
offered; but I must stop. Your letter has interested me much. I am very
far from strong, and have great fear that I must stop all work for a couple
of months for entire rest, and leave home. It will be ruin to all my work.

LETTER 166. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, April 23rd [1863].

The more I think of Falconer's letter (166/1. Published in the "Athenaeum"
April 4th, 1863, page 459. The writer asserts that Lyell did not make it
clear that certain material made use of in the "Antiquity of Man" was
supplied by the original work of Mr. Prestwich and himself. (See "Life and
Letters," III., page 19.)) the more grieved I am; he and Prestwich (the
latter at least must owe much to the "Principles") assume an absurdly
unwarrantable position with respect to Lyell. It is too bad to treat an
old hero in science thus. I can see from a note from Falconer (about a
wonderful fossil Brazilian Mammal, well called Meso- or Typo-therium) that
he expects no sympathy from me. He will end, I hope, by being sorry.
Lyell lays himself open to a slap by saying that he would come to show his
original observations, and then not distinctly doing so; he had better only
have laid claim, on this one point of man, to verification and compilation.

Altogether, I much like Lyell's letter. But all this squabbling will
greatly sink scientific men. I have seen a sneer already in the "Times."

LETTER 167. TO H.W. BATES.
At Rev. C. Langton, Hartfield, Tunbridge Wells, April 30th [1863].

You will have received before this the note which I addressed to Leicester,
after finishing Volume I., and you will have received copies of my little
review (167/1. "Nat. Hist. Review," 1863, page 219. A review of Bates'
paper on Mimetic Butterflies.) of your paper...I have now finished Volume
II., and my opinion remains the same--that you have written a truly
admirable work (167/2. "The Naturalist on the Amazons," 1863.), with
capital original remarks, first-rate descriptions, and the whole in a style
which could not be improved. My family are now reading the book, and
admire it extremely; and, as my wife remarks, it has so strong an air of
truthfulness. I had a letter from a person the other day, unknown to you,
full of praise of the book. I do hope it may get extensively heard of and
circulated; but to a certain extent this, I think, always depends on
chance.

I suppose the clicking noise of surprise made by the Indian is that which
the end of the tongue, applied to the palate of the mouth and suddenly
withdrawn, makes?

I have not written since receiving your note of April 20th, in which you
confided in me and told me your prospects. I heartily wish they were
better, and especially more certain; but with your abilities and powers of
writing it will be strange if you cannot add what little you require for
your income. I am glad that you have got a retired and semi-rural
situation. What a grand ending you give to your book, contrasting
civilisation and wild life! I quite regret that I have finished it: every
evening it was a real treat to me to have my half-hour in the grand
Amazonian forest, and picture to myself your vivid descriptions. There are
heaps of facts of value to me in a natural history point of view. It was a
great misfortune that you were prevented giving the discussion on species.
But you will, I hope, be able to give your views and facts somewhere else.

LETTER 168. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, May 15th [1863].

Your letter received this morning interested me more than even most of your
letters, and that is saying a good deal. I must scribble a little on
several points. About Lyell and species--you put the whole case, I do
believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted and whole-headed." (168/1.
Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken up by Lyell
in the "Antiquity of Man" is illustrated in the "Life and Letters," III.,
pages 11, 13. See also Letter 164, page 239.) I wrote to A. Gray that,
when I saw such men as Lyell and he refuse to judge, it put me in despair,
and that I sometimes thought I should prefer that Lyell had judged against
modification of species rather than profess inability to decide; and I left
him to apply this to himself. I am heartily rejoiced to hear that you
intend to try to bring L. and F. (168/2. Falconer claimed that Lyell had
not "done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave question."
See "Life and Letters," III., page 14.) together again; but had you not
better wait till they are a little cooled? You will do Science a real good
service. Falconer never forgave Lyell for taking the Purbeck bones from
him and handing them over to Owen.

With respect to island floras, if I understand rightly, we differ almost
solely how plants first got there. I suppose that at long intervals, from
as far back as later Tertiary periods to the present time, plants
occasionally arrived (in some cases, perhaps, aided by different currents
from existing currents and by former islands), and that these old arrivals
have survived little modified on the islands, but have become greatly
modified or become extinct on the continent. If I understand, you believe
that all islands were formerly united to continents, and then received all
their plants and none since; and that on the islands they have undergone
less extinction and modification than on the continent. The number of
animal forms on islands, very closely allied to those on continents, with a
few extremely distinct and anomalous, does not seem to me well to harmonise
with your supposed view of all having formerly arrived or rather having
been left together on the island.

LETTER 169. TO ASA GRAY.
Down, May 31st [1863?].

I was very glad to receive your review (169/1. The review on De Candolle's
work on the Oaks (A. Gray's "Scientific Papers," I., page 130).) of De
Candolle a week ago. It seems to me excellent, and you speak out, I think,
more plainly in favour of derivation of species than hitherto, though
doubtfully about Natural Selection. Grant the first, I am easy about the
second. Do you not consider such cases as all the orchids next thing to a
demonstration against Heer's view of species arising suddenly by
monstrosities?--it is impossible to imagine so many co-adaptations being
formed all by a chance blow. Of course creationists would cut the enigma.

LETTER 170. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
June 27th [1863?]

What are you doing now? I have never yet got hold of the "Edinburgh
Review," in which I hear you are well abused. By the way, I heard lately
from Asa Gray that Wyman was delighted at "Man's Place." (170/1.
"Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," by T.H. Huxley, 1863.) I wonder
who it is who pitches weakly, but virulently into you, in the
"Anthropological Review." How quiet Owen seems! I do at last begin to
believe that he will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense
he wrote in the "Athenaeum" (170/2. "Athenaeum," March 28th, 1863. See
"Life and Letters," III., page 17.) on Heterogeny! I saw in his Aye-Aye
(170/3. See Owen in the "Trans. Zool. Soc." Volume V. The sentence
referred to seems to be the following (page 95): "We know of no changes in
progress in the Island of Madagascar, necessitating a special quest of
wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine types of
organisation.') paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in which he
supposes that we should account for the structure of its limbs; and asks
how we know that certain insects had increased in the Madagascar forests.
Would it not be a good rebuff to ask him how he knows there were trees at
all on the leafless plains of La Plata for his Mylodons to tear down? But
I must stop, for if I once begin about [him] there will be no end. I was
disappointed in the part about species in Lyell. (170/4. Lyell's
"Antiquity of Man." See "Life and Letters," III., page 11.) You and
Hooker are the only two bold men. I have had a bad spring and summer,
almost constantly very unwell; but I am crawling on in my book on
"Variation under Domestication.")

LETTER 171. TO C. LYELL.
Down, August 14th [1863].

Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his address to the Linnean
Society? (171/1. Presidential address before the Linnean Society by G.
Bentham ("Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page xi., 1864).) they have
pleased me more than anything I have read for some time. I have no news,
for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad spring and
summer, but have managed to do a good deal of work. Emma is threatening me
to take me to Malvern, and perhaps I shall be compelled, but it is a horrid
waste of time; you must have enjoyed North Wales, I should think, it is to
me a most glorious country...

If you have not read Bates' book (171/2. Henry Walter Bates, "The
Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 volumes, London, 1863. In a letter to
Bates, April 18th, 1863, Darwin writes, "It is the best work of natural
history travels ever published in England" ("Life and Letters," II., page
381.), I think it would interest you. He is second only to Humboldt in
describing a tropical forest. (171/3. Quoted in "Life and Letters," II.,
page 381.). Talking of reading, I have never got the "Edinburgh" (171/4.
The "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man," by Sir Charles Lyell,
and works by other authors reviewed in the "Edinburgh Review." Volume
CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his criticism as follows:
"Glancing at the work of Sir Charles Lyell as a whole, it leaves the
impression on our minds that we have been reading an ingenious academical
thesis, rather than a work of demonstration by an original writer...There
is no argument in it, and only a few facts which have not been stated
elsewhere by Sir C. Lyell himself or by others" (loc. cit., page 294).), in
which, I suppose, you are cut up.