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LETTER 298. TO J.H. FABRE. Down, January 21st, 1881.
I am much obliged for your very interesting letter. Your results appear
to me highly important, as they eliminate one means by which animals
might perhaps recognise direction; and this, from what has been said
about savages, and from our own consciousness, seemed the most probable
means. If you think it worth while, you can of course mention my name in
relation to this subject.
Should you succeed in eliminating a sense of the magnetic currents of
the earth, you would leave the field of investigation quite open.
I suppose that even those who still believe that each species was
separately created would admit that certain animals possess some sense
by which they perceive direction, and which they use instinctively.
On mentioning the subject to my son George, who is a mathematician and
knows something about magnetism, he suggested making a very thin needle
into a magnet; then breaking it into very short pieces, which would
still be magnetic, and fastening one of these pieces with some cement on
the thorax of the insect to be experimented on.
He believes that such a little magnet, from its close proximity to
the nervous system of the insect, would affect it more than would the
terrestrial currents.
I have received your essay on Halictus (298/1. "Sur les Moeurs et la
Parthenogese des Halictes" ("Ann. Sc. Nat." IX., 1879-80).), which I am
sure that I shall read with much interest.
LETTER 299. TO T.H. HUXLEY.
(299/1. On April 9th, 1880, Mr. Huxley lectured at the Royal Institution
on "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species." The lecture was
published in "Nature" and in Huxley's "Collected Essays," Volume II.,
page 227. Darwin's letter to Huxley on the subject is given in "Life
and Letters," III., page 240; in Huxley's reply of May 10th ("Life and
Letters of T.H. Huxley," II., page 12) he writes: "I hope you do not
imagine because I had nothing to say about 'Natural Selection' that I am
at all weak of faith on that article...But the first thing seems to me
to be to drive the fact of evolution into people's heads; when that is
once safe, the rest will come easy.")
Down, May 11th, 1880.
I had no intention to make you write to me, or expectation of your
doing so; but your note has been so far "cheerier" (299/2. "You are the
cheeriest letter-writer I know": Huxley to Darwin. See Huxley's "Life,"
II., page 12.) to me than mine could have been to you, that I must
and will write again. I saw your motive for not alluding to Natural
Selection, and quite agreed in my mind in its wisdom. But at the same
time it occurred to me that you might be giving it up, and that anyhow
you could not safely allude to it without various "provisos" too long to
give in a lecture. If I think continuously on some half-dozen structures
of which we can at present see no use, I can persuade myself that
Natural Selection is of quite subordinate importance. On the other hand,
when I reflect on the innumerable structures, especially in plants,
which twenty years ago would have been called simply "morphological" and
useless, and which are now known to be highly important, I can persuade
myself that every structure may have been developed through Natural
Selection. It is really curious how many out of a list of structures
which Bronn enumerated, as not possibly due to Natural Selection because
of no functional importance, can now be shown to be highly important.
Lobed leaves was, I believe, one case, and only two or three days ago
Frank showed me how they act in a manner quite sufficiently important to
account for the lobing of any large leaf. I am particularly delighted at
what you say about domestic dogs, jackals, and wolves, because from
mere indirect evidence I arrived in "Varieties of Domestic Animals" at
exactly the same conclusion (299/3. Mr. Darwin's view was that domestic
dogs descend from more than one wild species.) with respect to the
domestic dogs of Europe and North America. See how important in another
way this conclusion is; for no one can doubt that large and small dogs
are perfectly fertile together, and produce fertile mongrels; and how
well this supports the Pallasian doctrine (299/4. See Letter 80.) that
domestication eliminates the sterility almost universal between forms
slowly developed in a state of nature.
I humbly beg your pardon for bothering you with so long a note; but it
is your own fault.
Plants are splendid for making one believe in Natural Selection, as will
and consciousness are excluded. I have lately been experimenting on
such a curious structure for bursting open the seed-coats: I declare
one might as well say that a pair of scissors or nutcrackers had been
developed through external conditions as the structure in question.
(299/5. The peg or heel in Cucurbita: see "Power of Movement in Plants"
page 102.)
LETTER 300. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, November 5th, 1880.
On reading over your excellent review (300/1. See "Nature," November
4th, 1880, page 1, a review of Volume I. of the publications of the
"Challenger," to which Sir Wyville Thomson contributed a General
Introduction.) with the sentence quoted from Sir Wyville Thomson, it
seemed to me advisable, considering the nature of the publication, to
notice "extreme variation" and another point. Now, will you read the
enclosed, and if you approve, post it soon. If you disapprove, throw it
in the fire, and thus add one more to the thousand kindnesses which you
have done me. Do not write: I shall see result in next week's "Nature."
Please observe that in the foul copy I had added a final sentence
which I do not at first copy, as it seemed to me inferentially too
contemptuous; but I have now pinned it to the back, and you can send
it or not, as you think best,--that is, if you think any part worth
sending. My request will not cost you much trouble--i.e. to read two
pages, for I know that you can decide at once. I heartily enjoyed my
talk with you on Sunday morning.
P.S.--If my manuscript appears too flat, too contemptuous, too spiteful,
or too anything, I earnestly beseech you to throw it into the fire.
LETTER 301. CHARLES DARWIN TO THE EDITOR OF "NATURE."
(301/1. "Nature," November 11th, 1880, page 32.)
Down, November 5th, 1880.
Sir Wyville Thomson and Natural Selection.
I am sorry to find that Sir Wyville Thomson does not understand the
principle of Natural Selection, as explained by Mr. Wallace and myself.
If he had done so, he could not have written the following sentence in
the Introduction to the Voyage of the "Challenger": "The character of
the abyssal fauna refuses to give the least support to the theory which
refers the evolution of species to extreme variation guided only by
Natural Selection." This is a standard of criticism not uncommonly
reached by theologians and metaphysicians, when they write on scientific
subjects, but is something new as coming from a naturalist. Professor
Huxley demurs to it in the l |