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More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I

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




Again accept my cordial and enduring thanks for all your kindness and
sympathy.


LETTER 183. TO B.D. WALSH.
Down, December 4th [1864].

I have been greatly interested by your account of your American life. What
an extraordinary and self-contained life you have led! and what vigour of
mind you must possess to follow science with so much ardour after all that
you have undergone! I am very much obliged to you for your pamphlet on
Geographical Distribution, on Agassiz, etc. (183/1. Mr. Walsh's paper "On
certain Entomological Speculations of the New England School of
Entomologists" was published in the "Proc. Entomolog. Soc. of
Philadelphia," September 1864, page 207.) I am delighted at the manner in
which you have bearded this lion in his den. I agree most entirely with
all that you have written. What I meant when I wrote to Agassiz to thank
him for a bundle of his publications, was exactly what you suppose.
(183/2. Namely, that Mr. Darwin, having been abused as an atheist, etc.,
by other writers, probably felt grateful to a writer who was willing to
allow him "a spirit as reverential as his own." ("Methods of Study,"
Preface, page iv.) I confess, however, I did not fully perceive how he had
misstated my views; but I only skimmed through his "Methods of Study," and
thought it a very poor book. I am so much accustomed to be utterly
misrepresented that it hardly excites my attention. But you really have
hit the nail on the head capitally. All the younger good naturalists whom
I know think of Agassiz as you do; but he did grand service about glaciers
and fish. About the succession of forms, Pictet has given up his whole
views, and no geologist now agrees with Agassiz. I am glad that you have
attacked Dana's wild notions; [though] I have a great respect for Dana...If
you have an opportunity, read in "Trans. Linn. Soc." Bates on "Mimetic
Lepidoptera of Amazons." I was delighted with his paper.

I have got a notice of your views about the female Cynips inserted in the
"Natural History Review" (183/3. "Nat. Hist. Review," January 1865, page
139. A notice by "J.L." (probably Lord Avebury) on Walsh's paper "On
Dimorphism in the Hymenopterous Genus Cynips," in the "Proc. Entomolog.
Soc. of Philadelphia," March, 1864.): whether the notice will be
favourable, I do not know, but anyhow it will call attention to your
views...

As you allude in your paper to the believers in change of species, you will
be glad to hear that very many of the very best men are coming round in
Germany. I have lately heard of Hackel, Gegenbauer, F. Muller, Leuckart,
Claparede, Alex. Braun, Schleiden, etc. So it is, I hear, with the younger
Frenchmen.


LETTER 184. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, January 19th [1865].

It is working hours, but I am trying to take a day's holiday, for I
finished and despatched yesterday my Climbing paper. For the last ten days
I have done nothing but correct refractory sentences, and I loathe the
whole subject like tartar emetic. By the way, I am convinced that you want
a holiday, and I think so because you took the devil's name in vain so
often in your last note. Can you come here for Sunday? You know how I
should like it, and you will be quiet and dull enough here to get plenty of
rest. I have been thinking with regret about what you said in one of your
later notes, about having neglected to make notes on the gradation of
character in your genera; but would it be too late? Surely if you looked
over names in series the facts would come back, and you might surely write
a fine paper "On the gradation of important characters in the genera of
plants." As for unimportant characters, I have made their perfect
gradation a very prominent point with respect to the means of climbing, in
my paper. I begin to think that one of the commonest means of transition
is the same individual plant having the same part in different states:
thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a
tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-
climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants in which
important parts such as the position of the ovule differ: differences in
the spire of leaves on lateral and terminal branches, etc.

There was not much in last "Natural History Review" which interested me
except colonial floras (184/1. "Nat. Hist. Review," 1865, page 46. A
review of Grisebach's "Flora of the British West Indian Islands" and
Thwaites' "Enumeratio Plantarum Zeylaniae." The point referred to is given
at page 57: "More than half the Flowering Plants belong to eleven Orders
in the case of the West Indies, and to ten in that of Ceylon, whilst with
but one exception the Ceylon Orders are the same as the West Indian." The
reviewer speculates on the meaning of the fact "in relation to the
hypothesis of an intertropical cold epoch, such as Mr. Darwin demands for
the migration of the Northern Flora to the Southern hemisphere.") and the
report on the sexuality of cryptogams. I suppose the former was by Oliver;
how extremely curious is the fact of similarity of Orders in the Tropics!
I feel a conviction that it is somehow connected with Glacial destruction,
but I cannot "wriggle" comfortably at all on the subject. I am nearly sure
that Dana makes out that the greatest number of crustacean forms inhabit
warmer temperate regions.

I have had an enormous letter from Leo Lesquereux (after doubts, I did not
think it worth sending you) on Coal Flora: he wrote some excellent
articles in "Silliman" again [my] "Origin" views; but he says now after
repeated reading of the book he is a convert! But how funny men's minds
are! he says he is chiefly converted because my books make the Birth of
Christ, Redemption by Grace, etc., plain to him!


LETTER 185. TO J.D. HOOKER.
Down, February 9th [1865].

I quite agree how humiliating the slow progress of man is, but every one
has his own pet horror, and this slow progress or even personal
annihilation sinks in my mind into insignificance compared with the idea or
rather I presume certainty of the sun some day cooling and we all freezing.
To think of the progress of millions of years, with every continent
swarming with good and enlightened men, all ending in this, and with
probably no fresh start until this our planetary system has been again
converted into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi, with a vengeance...


LETTER 186. TO B.D. WALSH.
Down, March 27th [1865].

I have been much interested by your letter. I received your former paper
on Phytophagic variety (186/1. For "Phytophagic Varieties and Phytophagic
Species" see "Proc. Entomolog. Soc. Philadelphia," November 1864, page 403,
also December 1865. The part on gradation is summarised at pages 427, 428.
Walsh shows that a complete gradation exists between species which are
absolutely unaffected by change of food and cases where "difference of food
is accompanied by marked and constant differences, either colorational, or
structural, or both, in the larva, pupa and imago states."), most of which
was new to me. I have since received your paper on willow-galls; this has
been very opportune, as I wanted to learn a little about galls. There was
much in this paper which has interested me extremely, on gradations, etc.,
and on your "unity of coloration." (186/2. "Unity of coloration": this
expression does not seem to occur in the paper of November 1864, but is
discussed at length in that of December 1865, page 209.) This latter
subject is nearly new to me, though I collected many years ago some such
cases with birds; but what struck me most was when a bird genus inhabits
two continents, the two sections sometimes display a somewhat different
type of colouring. I should like to hear whether this does not occur with
widely ranging insect-genera? You may like to hear that Wichura (186/3.
Max Wichura's "Die Bastarde befruchtung im Pflanzenreich, etc:" Breslau
1865. A translation appeared in the "Bibliotheque Universelle," xxiii.,
page 129: Geneva 1865.) has lately published a book which has quite
convinced me that in Europe there is a multitude of spontaneous hybrid
willows. Would it not be very interesting to know how the gall-makers
behaved with respect to these hybrids? Do you think it likely that the
ancestor of Cecidomyia acquired its poison like gnats (which suck men) for
no especial purpose (at least not for gall-making)? Such notions make me
wish that some one would try the experiments suggested in my former letter.
Is it not probable that guest-flies were aboriginally gall-makers, and bear
the same relation to them which Apathus probably does to Bombus? (186/4.
Apathus (= Psithyrus) lives in the nests of Bombus. These insects are said
to be so like humble bees that "they were not distinguished from them by
the early entomologists:" Dr. Sharp in "Cambridge Nat. Hist. (Insects,"
Part II.), page 59.) With respect to dimorphism, you may like to hear that
Dr. Hooker tells me that a dioecious parasitic plant allied to Rafflesia
has its two sexes parasitic on two distinct species of the same genus of
plants; so look out for some such case in the two forms of Cynips. I have
posted to you copies of my papers on dimorphism. Leersia (186/5. Leersia
oryzoides was for a long time thought to produce only cleistogamic and
therefore autogamous flowers. See "Variation of Animals and Plants,"
Edition II., Volume II., page 69.) does behave in a state of nature in the
provoking manner described by me. With respect to Wagner's curious
discovery my opinion is worth nothing; no doubt it is a great anomaly, but
it does not appear to me nearly so incredible as to you. Remember how
allied forms in the Hydrozoa differ in their so-called alternate
generations; I follow those naturalists who look at all such cases as forms
of gemmation; and a multitude of organisms have this power or traces of
this power at all ages from the germ to maturity. With respect to
Agassiz's views, there were many, and there are still not a few, who
believe that the same species is created on many spots. I wrote to Bates,
and he will send you his mimetic paper; and I dare say others: he is a
first-rate man.

Your case of the wingless insects near the Rocky Mountains is extremely
curious. I am sure I have heard of some such case in the Old World: I
think on the Caucasus. Would not my argument about wingless insular
insects perhaps apply to truly Alpine insects? for would it not be
destruction to them to be blown from their proper home? I should like to
write on many points at greater length to you, but I have no strength to
spare.


LETTER 187. TO A.R. WALLACE.
Down, September 22nd [1865].

I am much obliged for your extract (187/1. Mr. Wallace had sent Darwin a
note about a tufted cock-blackbird, which transmitted the character to some
of its offspring.); I never heard of such a case, though such a variation
is perhaps the most likely of any to occur in a state of nature, and to be
inherited, inasmuch as all domesticated birds present races with a tuft or
with reversed feathers on their heads. I have sometimes thought that the
progenitor of the whole class must have been a crested animal.

Do you make any progress with your journal of travels? I am the more
anxious that you should do so as I have lately read with much interest some
papers by you on the ourang-outan, etc., in the "Annals," of which I have
lately been reading the later volumes. I have always thought that journals
of this nature do considerable good by advancing the taste for Natural
History: I know in my own case that nothing ever stimulated my zeal so
much as reading Humboldt's "Personal Narrative." I have not yet received
the last part of the "Linnean Transactions," but your paper (187/2.
Probably on the variability and distribution of the butterflies of the
Malayan region: "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXV., 1866.) at present will be rather
beyond my strength, for though somewhat better, I can as yet do hardly
anything but lie on the sofa and be read aloud to. By the way, have you
read Tylor and Lecky? (187/3. Tylor, "Early History of Mankind;" Lecky's
"Rationalism.") Both these books have interested me much. I suppose you
have read Lubbock. (187/4. Lubbock, "Prehistoric Times," page 479:
"...the theory of Natural Selection, which with characteristic
unselfishness he ascribes unreservedly to Mr. Darwin.") In the last
chapter there is a note about you in which I most cordially concur. I see
you were at the British Association but I have heard nothing of it except
what I have picked up in the "Reader." I have heard a rumour that the
"Reader" is sold to the Anthropological Society. If you do not begrudge
the trouble of another note (for my sole channel of news through Hooker is
closed by his illness) I should much like to hear whether the "Reader" is
thus sold. I should be very sorry for it, as the paper would thus become
sectional in its tendency. If you write, tell me what you are doing
yourself. The only news which I have about the "Origin" is that Fritz
Muller published a few months ago a remarkable book (187/5. "Fur Darwin.")
in its favour, and secondly that a second French edition is just coming
out.


LETTER 188. TO F. MULLER.
Down, January 11th [1866].

I received your interesting letter of November 5th some little time ago,
and despatched immediately a copy of my "Journal of Researches." I fear
you will think me troublesome in my offer; but have you the second German
edition of the "Origin?" which is a translation, with additions, of the
third English edition, and is, I think, considerably improved compared with
the first edition. I have some spare copies which are of no use to me, and
it would be a pleasure to me to send you one, if it would be of any use to
you. You would never require to re-read the book, but you might wish to
refer to some passage. I am particularly obliged for your photograph, for
one likes to have a picture in one's mind of any one about whom one is
interested. I have received and read with interest your paper on the
sponge with horny spicula. (188/1. "Ueber Darwinella aurea, einen Schwamm
mit sternformigen Hornnadeln."--"Archiv. Mikrosk. Anat." I., page 57,
1866.) Owing to ill-health, and being busy when formerly well, I have for
some years neglected periodical scientific literature, and have lately been
reading up, and have thus read translations of several of your papers;
amongst which I have been particularly glad to read and see the drawings of
the metamorphoses of Peneus. (188/2. "On the Metamorphoses of the Prawns,"
by Dr. Fritz Muller.--"Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume XIV., page 104 (with
plate), 1864. Translated by W.S. Dallas from "Wiegmann's Archiv," 1863
(see also "Facts and Arguments for Darwin," passim, translated by W.S.
Dallas: London, 1869).) This seems to me the most interesting discovery
in embryology which has been made for years.

I am much obliged to you for telling me a little of your plans for the
future; what a strange, but to my taste interesting life you will lead when
you retire to your estate on the Itajahy!

You refer in your letter to the facts which Agassiz is collecting, against
our views, on the Amazons. Though he has done so much for science, he
seems to me so wild and paradoxical in all his views that I cannot regard
his opinions as of any value.


LETTER 189. TO A.R. WALLACE.
Down, January 22nd, 1866.

I thank you for your paper on pigeons (189/1. "On the Pigeons of the Malay
Archipelago" (The "Ibis," October, 1865). Mr. Wallace points out (page
366) that "the most striking superabundance of pigeons, as well as of
parrots, is confined to the Australo-Malayan sub-region in which...the
forest-haunting and fruit-eating mammals, such as monkeys and squirrels,
are totally absent." He points out also that monkeys are "exceedingly
destructive to eggs and young birds."), which interested me, as everything
that you write does. Who would ever have dreamed that monkeys influenced
the distribution of pigeons and parrots! But I have had a still higher
satisfaction, for I finished your paper yesterday in the "Linnean
Transactions." (189/2. "Linn. Soc. Trans." XXV.: a paper on the
geographical distribution and variability of the Malayan Papilionidae.) It
is admirably done. I cannot conceive that the most firm believer in
species could read it without being staggered. Such papers will make many
more converts among naturalists than long-winded books such as I shall
write if I have strength. I have been particularly struck with your
remarks on dimorphism; but I cannot quite understand one point (page 22),
(189/3. The passage referred to in this letter as needing further
explanation is the following: "The last six cases of mimicry are
especially instructive, because they seem to indicate one of the processes
by which dimorphic forms have been produced. When, as in these cases, one
sex differs much from the other, and varies greatly itself, it may happen
that individual variations will occasionally occur, having a distant
resemblance to groups which are the objects of mimicry, and which it is
therefore advantageous to resemble. Such a variety will have a better
chance of preservation; the individuals possessing it will be multiplied;
and their accidental likeness to the favoured group will be rendered
permanent by hereditary transmission, and each successive variation which
increases the resemblance being preserved, and all variations departing
from the favoured type having less chance of preservation, there will in
time result those singular cases of two or more isolated and fixed forms
bound together by that intimate relationship which constitutes them the
sexes of a single species. The reason why the females are more subject to
this kind of modification than the males is, probably, that their slower
flight, when laden with eggs, and their exposure to attack while in the act
of depositing their eggs upon leaves, render it especially advantageous for
them to have some additional protection. This they at once obtain by
acquiring a resemblance to other species which, from whatever cause, enjoy
a comparative immunity from persecution." Mr. Wallace has been good enough
to give us the following note on the above passage: "The above quotation
deals solely with the question of how certain females of the polymorphic
species (Papilio Memnon, P. Pammon, and others) have been so modified as to
mimic species of a quite distinct section of the genus; but it does not
attempt to explain why or how the other very variable types of female
arose, and this was Darwin's difficulty. As the letter I wrote in reply is
lost, and as it is rather difficult to explain the matter clearly without
reference to the coloured figures, I must go into some little detail, and
give now what was probably the explanation I gave at the time. The male of
Papilio Memnon is a large black butterfly with the nervures towards the
margins of the wings bordered with bluish gray dots. It is a forest
insect, and the very dark colour renders it conspicuous; but it is a strong
flier, and thus survives. To the female, however, this conspicuous mass of
colour would be dangerous, owing to her slower flight, and the necessity
for continually resting while depositing her eggs on the leaves of the
food-plant of the larva. She has accordingly acquired lighter and more
varied tints. The marginal gray-dotted stripes of the male have become of
a brownish ash and much wider on the fore wings, while the margin of the
hind wings is yellowish, with a more defined spot near the anal angle.
This is the form most nearly like the male, but it is comparatively rare,
the more common being much lighter in colour, the bluish gray of the hind
wings being often entirely replaced by a broad band of yellowish white.
The anal angle is orange-yellow, and there is a bright red spot at the base
of the fore wings. Between these two extremes there is every possible
variation. Now, it is quite certain that this varying mixture of brown,
black, white, yellow, and red is far less conspicuous amid the ever-
changing hues of the forest with their glints of sunshine everywhere
penetrating so as to form strong contrasts and patches of light and shade.
Hence ALL the females--one at one time and one at another--get SOME
protection, and that is sufficient to enable them to live long enough to
lay their eggs, when their work is finished. Still, under bad conditions
they only just managed to survive, and as the colouring of some of these
varying females very much resembled that of the protected butterflies of
the P. coon group (perhaps at a time when the tails of the latter were not
fully developed) any rudiments of a prolongation of the wing into a tail
added to the protective resemblance, and was therefore preserved. The
woodcuts of some of these forms in my "Malay Archipelago" (i., page 200)
will enable those who have this book at hand better to understand the
foregoing explanation."), and should be grateful for an explanation, for I
want fully to understand you. How can one female form be selected and the
intermediate forms die out, without also the other extreme form also dying
out from not having the advantages of the first selected form? for, as I
understand, both female forms occur on the same island. I quite agree with
your distinction between dimorphic forms and varieties; but I doubt whether
your criterion of dimorphic forms not producing intermediate offspring will
suffice, for I know of a good many varieties which must be so called that
will not blend or intermix, but produce offspring quite like either parent.

I have been particularly struck with your remarks on geographical
distribution in Celebes. It is impossible that anything could be better
put, and would give a cold shudder to the immutable naturalists.

And now I am going to ask a question which you will not like. How does
your journal get on? It will be a shame if you do not popularise your
researches.


LETTER 190. A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN.
Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, July 2nd, 1866.

I have been so repeatedly struck by the utter inability of numbers of
intelligent persons to see clearly, or at all, the self-acting and
necessary effects of Natural Selection, that I am led to conclude that the
term itself, and your mode of illustrating it, however clear and beautiful
to many of us, are yet not the best adapted to impress it on the general
naturalist public. The two last cases of the misunderstanding are: (1)
the article on "Darwin and his Teachings" in the last "Quarterly Journal of
Science," which, though very well written and on the whole appreciative,
yet concludes with a charge of something like blindness, in your not seeing
that Natural Selection requires the constant watching of an intelligent
"chooser," like man's selection to which you so often compare it; and (2)
in Janet's recent work on the "Materialism of the Present Day," reviewed in
last Saturday's "Reader," by an extract from which I see that he considers
your weak point to be that you do not see that "thought and direction are
essential to the action of Natural Selection." The same objection has been
made a score of times by your chief opponents, and I have heard it as often
stated myself in conversation. Now, I think this arises almost entirely
from your choice of the term "Natural Selection" and so constantly
comparing it in its effects to Man's Selection, and also your so frequently
personifying nature as "selecting," as "preferring," as "seeking only the
good of the species," etc., etc. To the few this is as clear as daylight,
and beautifully suggestive, but to many it is evidently a stumbling-block.
I wish, therefore, to suggest to you the possibility of entirely avoiding
this source of misconception in your great work (if not now too late), and
also in any future editions of the "Origin," and I think it may be done
without difficulty and very effectually by adopting Spencer's term (which
he generally uses in preference to Natural Selection)--viz., "survival of
the fittest."

This term is the plain expression of the fact; Natural Selection is a
metaphorical expression of it, and to a certain degree indirect and
incorrect, since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select
special variations as exterminate the most unfavourable ones.

Combined with the enormous multiplying powers of all organisms, and the
"struggle for existence" leading to the constant destruction of by far the
largest proportion--facts which no one of your opponents, as far as I am
aware, has denied or misunderstood--"the survival of the fittest" rather
than of those who were less fit could not possibly be denied or
misunderstood. Neither would it be possible to say that to ensure the
"survival of the fittest" any intelligent chooser was necessary; whereas
when you say Natural Selection acts so as to choose those that are fittest,
it IS misunderstood, and apparently always will be. Referring to your
book, I find such expressions as "Man selects only for his own good; Nature
only for that of the being which she tends." This, it seems, will always
be misunderstood; but if you had said "Man selects only for his own good;
Nature, by the inevitable 'survival of the fittest,' only for that of the
being she tends," it would have been less liable to be so.

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