Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History BookR INHABIT AN EQUALLY LARGE AREA? The probability
is that you cannot answer this question, though one of your cases seems
to bear on it...
You will, I think, be glad to hear that I now often hear of naturalists
accepting my views more or less fully; but some are curiously cautious
in running the risk of any small odium in expressing their belief.
LETTER 123. TO H.W. BATES. Down, April 4th [1861].
I have been unwell, so have delayed thanking you for your admirable
letter. I hope you will not think me presumptuous in saying how much
I have been struck with your varied knowledge, and with the decisive
manner in which you bring it to bear on each point,--a rare and most
high quality, as far as my experience goes. I earnestly hope you will
find time to publish largely: before the Linnean Society you might bring
boldly out your views on species. Have you ever thought of publishing
your travels, and working in them the less abstruse parts of your
Natural History? I believe it would sell, and be a very valuable
contribution to Natural History. You must also have seen a good deal of
the natives. I know well it would be quite unreasonable to ask for any
further information from you; but I will just mention that I am now, and
shall be for a long time, writing on domestic varieties of all animals.
Any facts would be useful, especially any showing that savages take any
care in breeding their animals, or in rejecting the bad and preserving
the good; or any fancies which they may have that one coloured or marked
dog, etc., is better than another. I have already collected much on this
head, but am greedy for facts. You will at once see their bearing on
variation under domestication.
Hardly anything in your letter has pleased me more than about sexual
selection. In my larger MS. (and indeed in the "Origin" with respect
to the tuft of hairs on the breast of the cock-turkey) I have guarded
myself against going too far; but I did not at all know that male and
female butterflies haunted rather different sites. If I had to cut up
myself in a review I would have [worried?] and quizzed sexual selection;
therefore, though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may
imagine how pleased I am at what you say on your belief. This part
of your letter to me is a quintessence of richness. The fact about
butterflies attracted by coloured sepals is another good fact, worth its
weight in gold. It would have delighted the heart of old Christian C.
Sprengel--now many years in his grave.
I am glad to hear that you have specially attended to "mimetic"
analogies--a most curious subject; I hope you publish on it. I have
for a long time wished to know whether what Dr. Collingwood asserts
is true--that the most striking cases generally occur between insects
inhabiting the same country.
LETTER 124. TO F.W. HUTTON. Down, April 20th [1861].
I hope that you will permit me to thank you for sending me a copy of
your paper in "The Geologist" (124/1. In a letter to Hooker (April
23rd?, 1861) Darwin refers to Hutton's review as "very original," and
adds that Hutton is "one of the very few who see that the change of
species cannot be directly proved..." ("Life and Letters," II., page
362). The review appeared in "The Geologist" (afterwards known as "The
Geological Magazine") for 1861, pages 132-6 and 183-8. A letter on
"Difficulties of Darwinism" is published in the same volume of "The
Geologist," page 286.), and at the same time to express my opinion
that you have done the subject a real service by the highly original,
striking, and condensed manner with which you have put the case. I am
actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce direct
evidence of one species changing into another, but that I believe that
this view in the main is correct, because so many phenomena can be thus
grouped together and explained. But it is generally of no use; I cannot
make persons see this. I generally throw in their teeth the universally
admitted theory of the undulation of light,--neither the undulation nor
the very existence of ether being proved, yet admitted because the view
explains so much. You are one of the very few who have seen this, and
have now put it most forcibly and clearly. I am much pleased to see
how carefully you have read my book, and, what is far more important,
reflected on so many points with an independent spirit. As I am deeply
interested in the subject (and I hope not exclusively under a personal
point of view) I could not resist venturing to thank you for the right
good service which you have done.
I need hardly say that this note requires no answer.
LETTER 125. TO J.D. HOOKER.
(125/1. Parts of this letter are published in "Life and Letters," II.,
page 362.)
Down, [April] 23rd, [1861].
I have been much interested by Bentham's paper in the "Natural History
Review," but it would not, of course, from familiarity, strike you as
it did me. (125/2. This refers to Bentham's paper "On the Species and
Genera of Plants, etc." "Nat. Hist. Review," April, 1861, page 133,
which is founded on, or extracted from, a paper read before the Linn.
Soc., November 15th, 1858. It had been originally set down to be read
on July 1st, 1858, but gave way to the papers of Darwin and Wallace.
Mr. Bentham has described ("Life and Letters," II., page 294) how he
reluctantly cancelled the parts urging "original fixity" of specific
type, and the remainder seems not to have been published except in the
above-quoted paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review.") I liked the whole--all
the facts on the nature of close and varying species. Good Heavens! to
think of the British botanists turning up their noses and saying that
he knows nothing of British plants! I was also pleased at his remarks on
classification, because it showed me that I wrote truly on this subject
in the "Origin." I saw Bentham at the Linnean Society, and had some talk
with him and Lubbock and Edgeworth, Wallich, and several others. I asked
Bentham to give us his ideas of species; whether partially with us or
dead against us, he would write excellent matter. He made no answer, but
his manner made me think he might do so if urged--so do you attack him.
Every one was speaking with affection and anxiety of Henslow. I dined
with Bell at the Linnean Club, and liked my dinner...dining-out is such
a novelty to me that I enjoyed it. Bell has a real good heart. I
liked Rolleston's paper, but I never read anything so obscure and not
self-evident as his "canons." (125/3. See "Nat. Hist. Review," 1861,
page 206. The paper is "On the Brain of the Orang Utang," and forms part
of the bitter controversy of this period to which reference occurs in
letters to Huxley and elsewhere in these volumes. Rolleston's work is
quoted by Huxley ("Man's Place in Nature," page 117) as part of the
crushing refutation of Owen's position. Mr. Huxley's letter referred to
above is no doubt that in the "Athenaeum," April 13th, 1861, page 498;
it is certainly severe, but to those who k |