Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Book total absence of any allusion to Tyndall's labours, even
when comets are his theme, seems strange to me.")
Haredene, Albury, Guildford, August 6th [1871].
I have read with greatest interest Thomson's address; but you say so
EXACTLY AND FULLY all that I think, that you have taken all the words
from my mouth; even about Tyndall. It is a gain that so wonderful a man,
though no naturalist, should become a convert to evolution; Huxley, it
seems, remarked in his speech to this effect. I should like to know what
he means about design,--I cannot in the least understand, for I presume
he does not believe in special interpositions. (243/2. See "British
Association Report," page cv. Lord Kelvin speaks very doubtfully of
evolution. After quoting the concluding passage of the "Origin," he goes
on, "I have omitted two sentences...describing briefly the hypothesis of
'the origin of species by Natural Selection,' because I have always felt
that this hypothesis does not contain the true theory of evolution,
IF EVOLUTION THERE HAS BEEN in biology" (the italics are not in
the original). Lord Kelvin then describes as a "most valuable and
instructive criticism," Sir John Herschel's remark that the doctrine of
Natural Selection is "too like the Laputan method of making books, and
that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually guiding and
controlling intelligence." But it should be remembered that it was
in this address of Lord Kelvin's that he suggested the possibility of
"seed-bearing meteoric stones moving about through space" inoculating
the earth with living organisms; and if he assumes that the whole
population of the globe is to be traced back to these "moss-grown
fragments from the ruins of another world," it is obvious that he
believes in a form of evolution, and one in which a controlling
intelligence is not very obvious, at all events not in the initial and
all-important stage.) Herschel's was a good sneer. It made me put in the
simile about Raphael's Madonna, when describing in the "Descent of Man"
the manner of formation of the wondrous ball-and-socket ornaments, and I
will swear to the truth of this case. (243/3. See "Descent of Man,"
II., page 141. Darwin says that no one will attribute the shading of the
"eyes" on the wings of the Argus pheasant to the "fortuitous concourse
of atoms of colouring-matter." He goes on to say that the development of
the ball-and-socket effect by means of Natural Selection seems at first
as incredible as that "one of Raphael's Madonnas should have been formed
by the selection of chance daubs of paint." The remark of Herschel's,
quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 241, that the "Origin"
illustrates the "law of higgledy-piggledy," is probably a conversational
variant of the Laputan comparison which gave rise to the passage in the
"Descent of Man" (see Letter 130).)
You know the oak-leaved variety of the common honeysuckle; I could not
persuade a lady that this was not the result of the honeysuckle climbing
up a young oak tree! Is this not like the Viola case?
LETTER 244. TO JOHN LUBBOCK (LORD AVEBURY). Haredene, Albury, Guildford,
August 12th [1871].
I hope the proof-sheets having been sent here will not inconvenience
you. I have read them with infinite satisfaction, and the whole
discussion strikes me as admirable. I have no books here, and wish much
I could see a plate of Campodea. (244/1. "On the Origin of Insects." By
Sir John Lubbock, Bart. "Journ. Linn. Soc. (Zoology)," Volume XI., 1873,
pages 422-6. (Read November 2nd, 1871.) In the concluding paragraph the
author writes, "If these views are correct the genus Campodea [a beetle]
must be regarded as a form of remarkable interest, since it is the
living representative of a primaeval type from which not only the
Collembola and Thysanura, but the other great orders of insects, have
all derived their origin." (See also "Brit. Assoc. Report," 1872, page
125--Address by Sir John Lubbock; and for a figure of Campodea see
"Nature," Volume VII., 1873, page 447.) I never reflected much on the
difficulty which you indicate, and on which you throw so much light.
(244/2. The difficulty alluded to is explained by the first sentence of
Lord Avebury's paper. "The Metamorphoses of this group (Insects) have
always seemed to me one of the greatest difficulties of the Darwinian
theory...I feel great difficulty in conceiving by what natural process
an insect with a suctorial mouth, like that of a gnat or butterfly,
could be developed from a powerfully mandibulate type like the
orthoptera, or even from the neuroptera...A clue to the difficulty
may, I think, be found in the distinction between the developmental and
adaptive changes to which I called the attention of the Society in a
previous memoir."
The distinction between developmental and adaptive changes is mentioned,
but not discussed, in the paper "On the Origin of Insects" (loc. cit.,
page 422); in a former paper, "On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera)
dimidiatum ("Trans. Linn. Soc." XXV. page 477, 1866), this question is
dealt with at length.) I have only a few trifling remarks to make. At
page 44 I wish you had enlarged a little on what you have said of the
distinction between developmental and adaptive changes; for I cannot
quite remember the point, and others will perhaps be in the same
predicament. I think I always saw that the larva and the adult might be
separately modified to any extent. Bearing in mind what strange changes
of function parts undergo, with the intermediate state of use (244/3.
This slightly obscure phrase may be paraphrased, "the gradational stages
being of service to the organism."), it seems to me that you speak
rather too boldly on the impossibility of a mandibulate insect being
converted into a sucking insect (244/4. "There are, however, peculiar
difficulties in those cases in which, as among the lepidoptera, the same
species is mandibulate as a larva and suctorial as an embryo" (Lubbock,
"Origin of Insects," page 423).); not that I in the least doubt the
value of your explanation.
Cirripedes passing through what I have called a pupal state (244/5.
"Hence, the larva in this, its last stage, cannot eat; it may be called
a "locomotive Pupa;" its whole organisation is apparently adapted for
the one great end of finding a proper site for its attachment and final
metamorphosis." ("A Monograph on the Sub-Class Cirripedia." By Charles
Darwin. London, Ray Soc., 1851.)) so far as their mouths are concerned,
rather supports what you say at page 52.
At page 40 your remarks on the Argus pheasant (244/6. There is no
mention of the Argus pheasant in the published paper.) (though I have
not the least objection to them) do not seem to me very appropriate
as being related to the mental faculties. If you can spare me these
proof-sheets when done with, I shall be obliged, as I shall be
correcting a new edition of the "Origin" when I return home, though this
subject is too large for me to enter on. I thank you sincerely |