Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Bookf a species out of a chaos of varying forms reminds me of Nageli's conclusion, as deduced from the study of Hieracium, that this is the common mode in which species arise. But I still continue to doubt much on this head, and cling to the belief expressed in the first edition of the "Origin," that protean or polymorphic species are those which are now varying in such a manner that the variations are neither advantageous nor disadvantageous. I am glad to hear of the Brunswick deposit, as I feel sure that the careful study of such cases is highly important. I hope that the Smithsonian Institution will publish your memoir. LETTER 258. TO A. DE CANDOLLE. Down, January 18th [1873]. It was very good of you to give up so much of your time to write to me your last interesting letter. The evidence seems good about the tameness of the alpine butterflies, and the fact seems to me very surprising, for each butterfly can hardly have acquired its experience during its own short life. Will you be so good as to thank M. Humbert for his note, which I have been glad to read. I formerly received from a man, not a naturalist, staying at Cannes a similar account, but doubted about believing it. The case, however, does not answer my query--viz., whether butterflies are attracted by bright colours, independently of the supposed presence of nectar? I must own that I have great difficulty in believing that any temporary condition of the parents can affect the offspring. If it last long enough to affect the health or structure of the parents, I can quite believe the offspring would be modified. But how mysterious a subject is that of generation! Although my hypothesis of pangenesis has been reviled on all sides, yet I must still look at generation under this point of view; and it makes me very averse to believe in an emotion having any effect on the offspring. Allow me to add one word about blushing and shyness: I intended only to say the habit was primordially acquired by attention to the face, and not that each shy man now attended to his personal appearance. LETTER 259. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, June 28th, 1873. I write a line to wish you good-bye, as I hear you are off on Wednesday, and to thank you for the Dionoea, but I cannot make the little creature grow well. I have this day read Bentham's last address, and must express my admiration of it. (259/1. Presidential address to the Linnean Society, read May 24th, 1873.) Perhaps I ought not to do so, as he fairly crushes me with honour. I am delighted to see how exactly I agree with him on affinities, and especially on extinct forms as illustrated by his flat-topped tree. (259/2. See page 15 of separate copy: "We should then have the present races represented by the countless branchlets forming the flat-topped summit" of a genealogical tree, in which "all we can do is to map out the summit as it were from a bird's-eye view, and under each cluster, or cluster of clusters, to place as the common trunk an imaginary type of a genus, order, or class according to the depth to which we would go.") My recent work leads me to differ from him on one point--viz., on the separation of the sexes. (259/3. On the question of sexuality, see page 10 of Bentham's address. On the back of Mr. Darwin's copy he has written: "As long as lowest organisms free--sexes separated: as soon as they become attached, to prevent sterility sexes united--reseparated as means of fertilisation, adapted [?] for distant [?] organisms,--in the case of animals by their senses and voluntary movements,--with plants the aid of insects and wind, the latter always existed, and long retained." The two words marked [?] are doubtful. The introduction of freedom or attachedness, as a factor in the problem also occurs in "Cross and Self-fertilisation," page 462. I strongly suspect that sexes were primordially in distinct individuals; then became commonly united in the same individual, and then in a host of animals and some few plants became again separated. Do ask Bentham to send a copy of his address to "Dr. H. Muller, Lippstadt, Prussia," as I am sure it will please him GREATLY. ...When in France write me a line and tell me how you get on, and how Huxley is; but do not do so if you feel idle, and writing bothers you. LETTER 260. TO R. MELDOLA. (260/1. This letter, with others from Darwin to Meldola, is published in "Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection," by E.B. Poulton, pages 199 et seq., London, 1896.) Southampton, August 13th, 1873. I am much obliged for your present, which no doubt I shall find at Down on my return home. I am sorry to say that I cannot answer your question; nor do I believe that you could find it anywhere even approximately answered. It is very difficult or impossible to define what is meant by a large variation. Such graduate into monstrosities or generally injurious variations. I do not myself believe that these are often or ever taken advantage of under nature. It is a common occurrence that abrupt and considerable variations are transmitted in an unaltered state, or not at all transmitted, to the offspring, or to some of them. So it is with tailless or hornless animals, and with sudden and great changes of colour in flowers. I wish I could have given you any answer. LETTER 261. TO E.S. MORSE. [Undated.] I must have the pleasure of thanking you for your kindness in sending me your essay on the Brachiopoda. (261/1. "The Brachiopoda, a Division of Annelida," "Amer. Assoc. Proc." Volume XIX., page 272, 1870, and "Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist." Volume VI., page 267, 1870.) I have just read it with the greatest interest, and you seem to me (though I am not a competent judge) to make out with remarkable clearness an extremely strong case. What a wonderful change it is to an old naturalist to have to look at these "shells" as "worms"; but, as you truly say, as far as external appearance is concerned, the case is not more wonderful than that of cirripedes. I have also been particularly interested by your remarks on the Geological Record, and on the lower and older forms in each great class not having been probably protected by calcareous valves or a shell. P.S.--Your woodcut of Lingula is most skilfully introduced to compel one to see its likeness to an annelid. LETTER 262. TO H. SPENCER. (262/1. Mr. Spencer's book "The Study of Sociology," 1873, was published in the "Contemporary Review" in instalments between May 1872 and October 1873.) October 31st [1873]. I am glad to receive to-day an advertisement of your book. I have been wonderfully interested by the articles in the "Contemporary." Those were splendid hits about the Prince of Wales and Gladstone. (262/2. See "The Study of Sociology," page 392. Mr. Gladstone, in protest against some words of Mr. Spencer, had said that the appearance of great men "in great crises of human history" were events so striking "that men would be liable to term them providential in a pre-scientific age." On this Mr. S |