Чарльз Дарвин
More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
I suppose the clicking noise of surprise made by the Indian is that which the end of the tongue, applied to the palate of the mouth and suddenly withdrawn, makes?
I have not written since receiving your note of April 20th, in which you confided in me and told me your prospects. I heartily wish they were better, and especially more certain; but with your abilities and powers of writing it will be strange if you cannot add what little you require for your income. I am glad that you have got a retired and semi-rural situation. What a grand ending you give to your book, contrasting civilisation and wild life! I quite regret that I have finished it: every evening it was a real treat to me to have my half-hour in the grand Amazonian forest, and picture to myself your vivid descriptions. There are heaps of facts of value to me in a natural history point of view. It was a great misfortune that you were prevented giving the discussion on species. But you will, I hope, be able to give your views and facts somewhere else.
LETTER 168. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 15th {1863}.
Your letter received this morning interested me more than even most of your letters, and that is saying a good deal. I must scribble a little on several points. About Lyell and species — you put the whole case, I do believe, when you say that he is "half-hearted and whole-headed." (168/1. Darwin's disappointment with the cautious point of view taken up by Lyell in the "Antiquity of Man" is illustrated in the "Life and Letters," III., pages 11, 13. See also Letter 164, page 239.) I wrote to A. Gray that, when I saw such men as Lyell and he refuse to judge, it put me in despair, and that I sometimes thought I should prefer that Lyell had judged against modification of species rather than profess inability to decide; and I left him to apply this to himself. I am heartily rejoiced to hear that you intend to try to bring L. and F. (168/2. Falconer claimed that Lyell had not "done justice to the part he took in resuscitating the cave question." See "Life and Letters," III., page 14.) together again; but had you not better wait till they are a little cooled? You will do Science a real good service. Falconer never forgave Lyell for taking the Purbeck bones from him and handing them over to Owen.
With respect to island floras, if I understand rightly, we differ almost solely how plants first got there. I suppose that at long intervals, from as far back as later Tertiary periods to the present time, plants occasionally arrived (in some cases, perhaps, aided by different currents from existing currents and by former islands), and that these old arrivals have survived little modified on the islands, but have become greatly modified or become extinct on the continent. If I understand, you believe that all islands were formerly united to continents, and then received all their plants and none since; and that on the islands they have undergone less extinction and modification than on the continent. The number of animal forms on islands, very closely allied to those on continents, with a few extremely distinct and anomalous, does not seem to me well to harmonise with your supposed view of all having formerly arrived or rather having been left together on the island.
LETTER 169. TO ASA GRAY. Down, May 31st {1863?}.
I was very glad to receive your review (169/1. The review on De Candolle's work on the Oaks (A. Gray's "Scientific Papers," I., page 130).) of De Candolle a week ago. It seems to me excellent, and you speak out, I think, more plainly in favour of derivation of species than hitherto, though doubtfully about Natural Selection. Grant the first, I am easy about the second. Do you not consider such cases as all the orchids next thing to a demonstration against Heer's view of species arising suddenly by monstrosities? — it is impossible to imagine so many co-adaptations being formed all by a chance blow. Of course creationists would cut the enigma.
LETTER 170. TO T.H. HUXLEY. June 27th {1863?}
What are you doing now? I have never yet got hold of the "Edinburgh Review," in which I hear you are well abused. By the way, I heard lately from Asa Gray that Wyman was delighted at "Man's Place." (170/1. "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," by T.H. Huxley, 1863.) I wonder who it is who pitches weakly, but virulently into you, in the "Anthropological Review." How quiet Owen seems! I do at last begin to believe that he will ultimately fall in public estimation. What nonsense he wrote in the "Athenaeum" (170/2. "Athenaeum," March 28th, 1863. See "Life and Letters," III., page 17.) on Heterogeny! I saw in his Aye-Aye (170/3. See Owen in the "Trans. Zool. Soc." Volume V. The sentence referred to seems to be the following (page 95): "We know of no changes in progress in the Island of Madagascar, necessitating a special quest of wood-boring larvae by small quadrupeds of the Lemurine or Sciurine types of organisation.') paper (I think) that he sneers at the manner in which he supposes that we should account for the structure of its limbs; and asks how we know that certain insects had increased in the Madagascar forests. Would it not be a good rebuff to ask him how he knows there were trees at all on the leafless plains of La Plata for his Mylodons to tear down? But I must stop, for if I once begin about {him} there will be no end. I was disappointed in the part about species in Lyell. (170/4. Lyell's "Antiquity of Man." See "Life and Letters," III., page 11.) You and Hooker are the only two bold men. I have had a bad spring and summer, almost constantly very unwell; but I am crawling on in my book on "Variation under Domestication.")
LETTER 171. TO C. LYELL. Down, August 14th {1863}.
Have you seen Bentham's remarks on species in his address to the Linnean Society? (171/1. Presidential address before the Linnean Society by G. Bentham ("Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc." Volume VII., page xi., 1864).) they have pleased me more than anything I have read for some time. I have no news, for I have not seen a soul for months, and have had a bad spring and summer, but have managed to do a good deal of work. Emma is threatening me to take me to Malvern, and perhaps I shall be compelled, but it is a horrid waste of time; you must have enjoyed North Wales, I should think, it is to me a most glorious country...
If you have not read Bates' book (171/2. Henry Walter Bates, "The Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 volumes, London, 1863. In a letter to Bates, April 18th, 1863, Darwin writes, "It is the best work of natural history travels ever published in England" ("Life and Letters," II., page 381.), I think it would interest you. He is second only to Humboldt in describing a tropical forest. (171/3. Quoted in "Life and Letters," II., page 381.). Talking of reading, I have never got the "Edinburgh" (171/4. The "Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man," by Sir Charles Lyell, and works by other authors reviewed in the "Edinburgh Review." Volume CXVIII., July 1863. The writer sums up his criticism as follows: "Glancing at the work of Sir Charles Lyell as a whole, it leaves the impression on our minds that we have been reading an ingenious academical thesis, rather than a work of demonstration by an original writer...There is no argument in it, and only a few facts which have not been stated elsewhere by Sir C. Lyell himself or by others" (loc. cit., page 294).), in which, I suppose, you are cut up.
LETTER 172. TO H. FALCONER. December 26th {1863}.
Thank you for telling me about the Pliocene mammal, which is very remarkable; but has not Owen stated that the Pliocene badger is identical with the recent? Such a case does indeed well show the stupendous duration of the same form. I have not heard of Suess' pamphlet (172/1. Probably Suess's paper "Ueber die Verschiedenheit und die Aufeinanderfolge der tertiaren Land-faunen in der Niederung von Wien." "Sitz. — Ber. Wien Akad." XLVII., page 306, 1863.), and should much like to learn the title, if it can be procured; but I am on different subjects just at present. I should rather like to see it rendered highly probable that the process of formation of a new species was short compared to its duration — that is, if the process was allowed to be slow and long; the idea is new to me. Heer's view that new species are suddenly formed like monsters, I feel a conviction from many reasons is false.
CHAPTER 1.IV. — EVOLUTION, 1864-1869
LETTER 173. TO A.R. WALLACE. Down, January 1st, 1864.
I am still unable to write otherwise than by dictation. In a letter received two or three weeks ago from Asa Gray he writes: "I read lately with gusto Wallace's expose of the Dublin man on Bees' cells, etc." (173/1. "Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's paper on the Bee's Cell and on the Origin of Species" ("Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." XII., 1863, page 303). Prof. Haughton's paper was read before the Natural History Society of Dublin, November 21st, 1862, and reprinted in the "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist." XI., 1863, page 415. See Letters 73, 74, 75.) Now, though I cannot read at present, I much want to know where this is published, that I may procure a copy. Further on, Asa Gray says (after speaking of Agassiz's paper on Glaciers in the "Atlantic Magazine" and his recent book entitled "Method of Study"): "Pray set Wallace upon these articles." So Asa Gray seems to think much of your powers of reviewing, and I mention this as it assuredly is laudari a laudato. I hope you are hard at work, and if you are inclined to tell me, I should much like to know what you are doing. It will be many months, I fear, before I shall do anything.
LETTER 174. TO J.L.A. DE QUATREFAGES. Down, March 27th {1864?}.
I had heard that your work was to be translated, and I heard it with pleasure; but I can take no share of credit, for I am not an active, only an honorary member of the Society. Since writing I have finished with extreme interest to the end your admirable work on metamorphosis. (174/1. Probably "Metamorphoses of Man and the Lower Animals." Translated by H. Lawson, 1864.) How well you are acquainted with the works of English naturalists, and how generously you bestow honour on them! Mr. Lubbock is my neighbour, and I have known him since he was a little boy; he is in every way a thoroughly good man; as is my friend Huxley. It gave me real pleasure to see you notice their works as you have done.
LETTER 175. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, April 11th {1864}.
I am very much obliged for your present of your "Comp. Anatomy." (175/1. "Lectures on the Elements of Comparative Anatomy," 1864.) When strong enough I am sure I shall read it with greatest interest. I could not resist the last chapter, of which I have read a part, and have been much interested about the "inspired idiot." (175/2. In reference to Oken (op. cit., page 282) Huxley says: "I must confess I never read his works without thinking of the epithet of 'inspired idiot' applied to our own Goldsmith.") If Owen wrote the article "Oken" (175/3. The article on Oken in the eighth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is signed "R.O.": Huxley wrote to Darwin (April 18th, 1864), "There is not the smallest question that Owen wrote both the article 'Oken' and the 'Archetype' Book" (Huxley's "Life," I., page 250). Mr. Huxley's statements amount to this: (1) Prof. Owen accuses Goethe of having in 1820 appropriated Oken's theory of the skull, and of having given an apocryphal account of how the idea occurred to himself in 1790. (2) in the same article, page 502, Owen stated it to be questionable whether the discoverer of the true theory of the segmental constitution of the skull (i.e. himself) was excited to his labours, or "in any way influenced by the a priori guesses of Oken." On this Huxley writes, page 288: "But if he himself had not been in any way influenced by Oken, and if the 'Programm' {of Oken} is a mere mass of 'a priori guesses,' how comes it that only three years before Mr. Owen could write thus? 'Oken, ce genie profond et penetrant, fut le premier qui entrevit la verite, guide par l'heureuse idee de l'arrangement des os craniens en segments, comme ceux du rachis, appeles vertebres...'" Later on Owen wrote: "Cela servira pour exemple d'une examen scrupuleux des faits, d'une appreciation philosophique de leurs relations et analogies, etc." (From "Principes d'Osteologie comparee, ou Recherches sur l'Archetype," etc., pages 155, 1855). (3) Finally Huxley says, page 289, plainly: "The fact is that, so far from not having been 'in any way influenced' by Oken, Prof. Owen's own contributions to this question are the merest Okenism, remanie.") and the French work on the Archetype (points you do not put quite clearly), he never did a baser act...You are so good a Christian that you will hardly understand how I chuckle over this bit of baseness. I hope you keep well and hearty; I honour your wisdom at giving up at present Society for Science. But, on the other hand, I feel it in myself possible to get to care too much for Natural Science and too little for other things. I am getting better, I almost dare to hope permanently; for my sickness is decidedly less — for twenty-seven days consecutively I was sick many times daily, and lately I was five days free. I long to do a little work again. The magnificent (by far the most magnificent, and too magnificent) compliment which you paid me at the end of your "Origin of Species" (175/4. A title applied to the "Lectures to Working Men," that "green little book" referred to in Letter 156. Speaking of Mr. Darwin's work he says (page 156): "I believe that if you strip it of its theoretical part, it still remains one of the greatest encyclopaedias of biological doctrine that any one man ever brought forth; and I believe that, if you take it as the embodiment of an hypothesis, it is destined to be the guide of biological and psychological speculation for the next three or four generations.') I have met with reprinted from you two or three times lately.
LETTER 175A. TO ERASMUS DARWIN. Down, June 30th, 1864.
(175A.1. The preceding letter contains a reference to the prolonged period of ill-health which Darwin suffered in 1863 and 1864, and in this connection the present letter is of interest.
The Copley Medal was given to him in 1864.)
I had not heard a word about the Copley Medal. Please give Falconer my cordial thanks for his interest about me. I enclose the list of everything published by me except a few unimportant papers. Ask Falconer not to mention that I sent the list, as some one might say I had been canvassing, which is an odious imputation. The origin of the Voyage in the "Beagle" was that Fitz-Roy generously offered to give up half his cabin to any one who would volunteer to go as naturalist. Beaufort wrote to Cambridge, and I volunteered. Fitz-Roy never persuaded me to give up the voyage on account of sickness, nor did I ever think of doing so, though I suffered considerably; but I do not believe it was the cause of my subsequent ill-health, which has lost me so many years, and therefore I should not think the sea-sickness was worth notice. It would save you trouble to forward this with my kindest remembrances to Falconer.
(176/1. The following letter was the beginning of a correspondence with Mr. B.D. Walsh, whom C.V. Riley describes as "one of the ablest and most thorough entomologists of our time.")
LETTER 176. B.D. WALSH TO CHARLES DARWIN. Rock Island, Illinois, U.S., April 29th, 1864.
(176/2. The words in square brackets are restorations of parts torn off the original letter.)
More than thirty years ago I was introduced to you at your rooms in Christ's College by A.W. Grisebach, and had the pleasure of seeing your noble collection of British Coleoptera. Some years afterwards I became a Fellow of Trinity, and finally gave up my Fellowship rather than go into Orders, and came to this country. For the last five or six years I have been paying considerable attention to the insect fauna of the U.S., some of the fruits of which you will see in the enclosed pamphlets. Allow me to take this opportunity of thanking you for the publication of your "Origin of Species," which I read three years ago by the advice of a botanical friend, though I had a strong prejudice against what I supposed then to be your views. The first perusal staggered me, the second convinced me, and the oftener I read it the more convinced I am of the general soundness of your theory.
As you have called upon naturalists that believe in your views to give public testimony of their convictions, I have directed your attention on the outside of one or two of my pamphlets to the particular passages in which {I} have done so. You will please accept these papers from me in token of my respect and admiration.
As you may see from the latest of these papers, I {have} recently made the remarkable discover that there {are the} so-called "three sexes" not only in social insects but {also in the} strictly solitary genus Cynips.
When is your great work to make its appearance? {I should be} much pleased to receive a few lines from you.
LETTER 177. TO B.D. WALSH. Down, October 21st {1864}.
Ill-health has prevented me from sooner thanking you for your very kind letter and several memoirs.
I have been very much pleased to see how boldly and clearly you speak out on the modification of species. I thank you for giving me the pages of reference; but they were superfluous, for I found so many original and profound remarks that I have carefully looked through all the papers. I hope that your discovery about the Cynips (177/1. "On Dimorphism in the hymenopterous genus Cynips," "Proc. Entom. Soc. Philadelphia," March, 1864. Mr. Walsh's view is that Cynips quercus aciculata is a dimorphous form of Cynips q. spongifica, and occurs only as a female. Cynips q. spongifica also produces spongifica females and males from other galls at a different time of year.) will hold good, for it is a remarkable one, and I for one have often marvelled what could be the meaning of the case. I will lend your paper to my neighbour Mr. Lubbock, who I know is much interested in the subject. Incidentally I shall profit by your remarks on galls. If you have time I think a rather hopeless experiment would be worth trying; anyhow, I should have tried it had my health permitted. It is to insert a minute grain of some organic substance, together with the poison from bees, sand-wasps, ichneumons, adders, and even alkaloid poisons into the tissues of fitting plants for the chance of monstrous growths being produced. (177/2. See "Life and Letters," III., page 346, for an account of experiments attempted in this direction by Mr. Darwin in 1880. On the effects of injuring plant-tissues, see Massart, "La Cicatrisation, etc." in Tome LVII. of the "Memoires Couronnes" of the Brussels Academy.)
My health has long been poor, and I have lately suffered from a long illness which has interrupted all work, but I am now recommencing a volume in connection with the "Origin."
P.S. — If you write again I should very much like to hear what your life in your new country is.
What can be the meaning or use of the great diversity of the external generative organs in your cases, in Bombus, and the phytophagous coleoptera?
What can there be in the act of copulation necessitating such complex and diversified apparatus?
LETTER 178. TO W.H. FLOWER. Down, July 11th, 1864.
I am truly obliged for all the trouble which you have taken for me, and for your very interesting note. I had only vaguely heard it said that frogs had a rudiment of a sixth toe; had I known that such great men had looked to the point I should not have dreamed of looking myself. The rudiment sent to you was from a full-grown frog; so that if these bones are the two cuneiforms they must, I should think, be considered to be in a rudimentary condition. This afternoon my gardener brought in some tadpoles with the hind-legs alone developed, and I looked at the rudiment. At this age it certainly looks extremely like a digit, for the extremity is enlarged like that of the adjoining real toe, and the transverse articulation seems similar. I am sorry that the case is doubtful, for if these batrachians had six toes, I certainly think it would have thrown light on the truly extraordinary strength of inheritance in polydactylism in so many animals, and especially on the power of regeneration in amputated supernumerary digits. (178/1. In the first edition of "Variation under Domestication" the view here given is upheld, but in the second edition (Volume I., page 459) Darwin withdrew his belief that the development of supernumerary digits in man is "a case of reversion to a lowly-organised progenitor provided with more than five digits." See Letters 161, 270.)
LETTER 179. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down {October 22nd, 1864}.
The Lyells have been here, and were extremely pleasant, but I saw them only occasionally for ten minutes, and when they went I had an awful day {of illness}; but I am now slowly getting up to my former standard. I shall soon be confined to a living grave, and a fearful evil it is.
I suppose you have read Tyndall. (179/1. Probably Tyndall "On the Conformation of the Alps" ("Phil. Mag." 1864, page 255).) I have now come round again to Ramsay's view, (179/2. "Phil. Mag." 1864, page 293.) for the third or fourth time; but Lyell says when I read his discussion in the "Elements," I shall recant for the fifth time. (179/3. This refers to a discussion on the "Connection of the predominance of Lakes with Glacial Action" ("Elements," Edition VI., pages 168-74). Lyell adheres to the views expressed in the "Antiquity of Man" (1863) against Ramsay's theory of the origin of lake basins by ice action.) What a capital writer Tyndall is!
In your last note you ask what the Bardfield oxlip is. It is P. elatior of Jacq., which certainly looks, when growing, to common eyes different from the common oxlip. I will fight you to the death that as primrose and cowslip are different in appearance (not to mention odour, habitat and range), and as I can now show that, when they cross, the intermediate offspring are sterile like ordinary hybrids, they must be called as good species as a man and a gorilla.
I agree that if Scott's red cowslip grew wild or spread itself and did not vary {into} common cowslip (and we have absolutely no proof of primrose or cowslip varying into each other), and as it will not cross with the cowslip, it would be a perfectly good species. The power of remaining for a good long period constant I look at as the essence of a species, combined with an appreciable amount of difference; and no one can say there is not this amount of difference between primrose and oxlip.
(PLATE: HUGH FALCONER, 1844. From a photograph by Hill & Adamson.)
LETTER 180. HUGH FALCONER TO W. SHARPEY.
(180/1. Falconer had proposed Darwin for the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (which was awarded to him in 1864), but being detained abroad, he gave his reasons for supporting Darwin for this honour in a letter to Sharpey, the Secretary of the Royal Society. A copy of the letter here printed seems to have been given to Erasmus Darwin, and by him shown to his brother Charles.)
Montauban, October 25th, 1864.
Busk and myself have made every effort to be back in London by the 27th inst., but we have been persecuted by mishaps — through the breakdown of trains, diligences, etc., so that we have been sadly put out in our reckoning — and have lost some of the main objects that brought us round by this part of France — none of which were idle or unimportant.
Busk started yesterday for Paris from Bruniquel, to make sure of being present at the meeting of the Royal Council on Thursday. He will tell you that there were strong reasons for me remaining behind him. But as I seconded the proposal of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal, in default of my presence at the first meeting, I beg that you will express my great regrets to the President and Council at not being there, and that I am very reluctantly detained. I shall certainly be in London (D.V.) by the second meeting on the 3rd proximo. Meanwhile I solicit the favour of being heard, through you, respecting the grounds upon which I seconded Mr. Darwin's nomination for the Copley Medal.
Referring to the classified list which I drew up of Mr. Darwin's scientific labours, ranging through the wide field of (1) Geology, (2) Physical Geography, (3) Zoology, (4) physiological Botany, (5) genetic Biology, and to the power with which he has investigated whatever subject he has taken up, — Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit, — I am of opinion that Mr. Darwin is not only one of the most eminent naturalists of his day, but that hereafter he will be regarded as one of the great naturalists of all countries and of all time. His early work on the structure and distribution of coral reefs constitutes an era in the investigation of the subject. As a monographic labour, it may be compared with Dr. Wells' "Essay upon Dew," as original, exhaustive, and complete — containing the closest observation with large and important generalisations.
Among the zoologists his monographs upon the Balanidae and Lepadidae, Fossil and Recent, in the Palaeontographical and Ray Societies' publications, are held to be models of their kind.
In physiological Botany, his recent researches upon the dimorphism of the genital organs in certain plants, embodied in his papers in the "Linnean Journal," on Primula, Linum, and Lythrum, are of the highest order of importance. They open a new mine of observation upon a field which had been barely struck upon before. The same remark applies to his researches on the structure and various adaptations of the orchideous flower to a definite object connected with impregnation of the plants through the agency of insects with foreign pollen. There has not yet been time for their due influence being felt in the advancement of the science. But in either subject they constitute an advance per saltum. I need not dwell upon the value of his geological researches, which won for him one of the earlier awards of the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society, the best of judges on the point.
And lastly, Mr. Darwin's great essay on the "Origin of Species" by Natural Selection. This solemn and mysterious subject had been either so lightly or so grotesquely treated before, that it was hardly regarded as being within the bounds of legitimate philosophical investigation. Mr. Darwin, after twenty years of the closest study and research, published his views, and it is sufficient to say that they instantly fixed the attention of mankind throughout the civilised world. That the efforts of a single mind should have arrived at success on a subject of such vast scope, and encompassed with such difficulties, was more than could have been reasonably expected, and I am far from thinking that Charles Darwin has made out all his case. But he has treated it with such power and in such a philosophical and truth-seeking spirit, and illustrated it with such an amount of original and collated observation as fairly to have brought the subject within the bounds of rational scientific research. I consider this great essay on genetic Biology to constitute a strong additional claim on behalf of Mr. Darwin for the Copley Medal. (180/2. The following letter (December 3rd, 1864), from Mr. Huxley to Sir J.D. Hooker, is reprinted, by the kind permission of Mr. L. Huxley, from his father's "Life," I., page 255. Sabine's address (from the "Reader") is given in the "Life and Letters," III., page 28. In the "Proceedings of the Royal Society" the offending sentence is slightly modified. It is said, in Huxley's "Life" (loc. cit., note), that the sentence which follows it was introduced to mitigate the effect: —
"I wish you had been at the anniversary meeting and dinner, because the latter was very pleasant, and the former, to me, very disagreeable. My distrust of Sabine is, as you know, chronic; and I went determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some crafty phrase injurious to Darwin should be introduced. My suspicions were justified, the only part of the address {relating} to Darwin written by Sabine himself containing the following passage:
"'Speaking generally and collectively, we have expressly omitted it {Darwin's theory} from the grounds of our award.'
"Of course this would be interpreted by everybody as meaning that after due discussion, the council had formally resolved not only to exclude Darwin's theory from the grounds of the award, but to give public notice through the president that they had done so, and, furthermore, that Darwin's friends had been base enough to accept an honour for him on the understanding that in receiving it he should be publicly insulted!
"I felt that this would never do, and therefore, when the resolution for printing the address was moved, I made a speech, which I took care to keep perfectly cool and temperate, disavowing all intention of interfering with the liberty of the president to say what he pleased, but exercising my constitutional right of requiring the minutes of council making the award to be read, in order that the Society might be informed whether the conditions implied by Sabine had been imposed or not.
"The resolution was read, and of course nothing of the kind appeared. Sabine didn't exactly like it, I believe. Both Busk and Falconer remonstrated against the passage to him, and I hope it will be withdrawn when the address is printed. If not, there will be an awful row, and I for one will show no mercy.")
