More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1

With respect to the Copley medal (39/3. The Copley Medal was given to Lyell in 1858.), I have a strong feeling that Lyell has a high claim, but as he has had the Royal Medal I presume that it would be thought objectionable to propose him; and as I intend (you not objecting and converting me) to propose W. for the Royal, it would, of course, appear intolerably presumptuous to propose for the Copley also.

LETTER 40. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, June 10th, 1855.

Shall you attend the Council of the Royal Society on Thursday next? I have not been very well of late, and I doubt whether I can attend; and if I could do anything (pray conceal the scandalous fact), I want to go to the Crystal Palace to meet the Horners, Lyells, and a party. So I want to know whether you will speak for me most strongly for Barrande. You know better than I do his admirable labours on the development of trilobites, and his most important work on his Lower or Primordial Zone. I enclose an old note of Lyell's to show what he thinks. With respect to Dana, whom I also proposed, you know well his merits. I can speak most highly of his classificatory work on crustacea and his Geographical Distribution. His Volcanic Geology is admirable, and he has done much good work on coral reefs.

If you attend, do not answer this; but if you cannot be at the Council, please inform me, and I suppose I must, if I can, attend.

Thank you for your abstract of your lecture at the Royal Institution, which interested me much, and rather grieved me, for I had hoped things had been in a slight degree otherwise. (40/1. "On certain Zoological Arguments commonly adduced in favour of the hypothesis of the Progressive Development of Animal Life," Discourse, Friday, April 20, 1855: "Proceedings R.I." (1855). Published also in "Huxley's Scientific Memoirs." The lecturer dwelt chiefly on the argument of Agassiz, which he summarises as follows: "Homocercal fishes have in their embryonic state heterocercal tails; therefore heterocercality is, so far, a mark of an embryonic state as compared with homocercality, and the earlier heterocercal fish are embryonic as compared with the later homocercal." He shows that facts do not support this view, and concludes generally "that there is no real parallel between the successive forms assumed in the development of the life of the individual at present and those which have appeared at different epochs in the past.") I heard some time ago that before long I might congratulate you on becoming a married man. (40/2. Mr. Huxley was married July 21st, 1855.) From my own experience of some fifteen years, I am very sure that there is nothing in this wide world which more deserves congratulation, and most sincerely and heartily do I congratulate you, and wish you many years of as much happiness as this world can afford.

LETTER 41. TO J.D. HOOKER.

(41/1. The following letter illustrates Darwin's work on aberrant genera. In the "Origin," Edition I., page 429, he wrote: "The more aberrant any form is, the greater must be the number of connecting forms which, on my theory, have been exterminated and utterly lost. And we have some evidence of aberrant forms having suffered severely from extinction, for they are generally represented by extremely few species; and such species as do occur are generally very distinct from each other, which again implies extinction.")

Down, November 15th {1855?}.

In Schoenherr's Catalogue of Curculionidae (41/2. "Genera et Species Curculionidum." (C.J. Schoenherr: Paris, 1833-38.)), the 6,717 species are on an average 10.17 to a genus. Waterhouse (who knows the group well, and who has published on fewness of species in aberrant genera) has given me a list of 62 aberrant genera, and these have on an average 7.6 species; and if one single genus be removed (and which I cannot yet believe ought to be considered aberrant), then the 61 aberrant genera would have only 4.91 species on an average. I tested these results in another way. I found in Schoenherr 9 families, including only 11 genera, and these genera (9 of which were in Waterhouse's list) I found included only 3.36 species on an average.

This last result led me to Lindley's "Vegetable Kingdom," in which I found (excluding thallogens and acrogens) that the genera include each 10.46 species (how near by chance to the Curculionidae), and I find 21 orders including single genera, and these 21 genera have on average 7.95 species; but if Lindley is right that Erythroxylon (with its 75 species) ought to be amongst the Malpighiads, then the average would be only 4.6 per genus.

But here comes, as it appears to me, an odd thing (I hope I shall not quite weary you out). There are 29 other orders, each with 2 genera, and these 58 genera have on an average 15.07 species: this great number being owing to the 10 genera in the Smilaceae, Salicaceae (with 220 species), Begoniaceae, Balsaminaceae, Grossulariaceae, without which the remaining 48 genera have on an average only 5.91 species.

This case of the orders with only 2 genera, the genera notwithstanding having 15.07 species each, seems to me very perplexing and upsets, almost, the conclusion deducible from the orders with single genera.

I have gone higher, and tested the alliances with 1, 2, and 3 orders; and in these cases I find both the genera few in each alliance, and the species, less than the average of the whole kingdom, in each genus.

All this has amused me, but I daresay you will have a good sneer at me, and tell me to stick to my barnacles. By the way, you agree with me that sometimes one gets despondent — for instance, when theory and facts will not harmonise; but what appears to me even worse, and makes me despair, is, when I see from the same great class of facts, men like Barrande deduce conclusions, such as his "Colonies" (41/3. Lyell briefly refers to Barrande's Bohemian work in a letter (August 31st, 1856) to Fleming ("Life of Sir Charles Lyell," II., page 225): "He explained to me on the spot his remarkable discovery of a 'colony' of Upper Silurian fossils, 3,400 feet deep, in the midst of the Lower Silurian group. This has made a great noise, but I think I can explain away the supposed anomaly by, etc." (See Letter 40, Note.) and his agreement with E. de Beaumont's lines of Elevation, or such men as Forbes with his Polarity (41/4. Edward Forbes "On the Manifestation of Polarity in the Distribution of Organised Beings in Time" ("Edinburgh New Phil. Journal," Volume LVII., 1854, page 332). The author points out that "the maximum development of generic types during the Palaeozoic period was during its earlier epochs; that during the Neozoic period towards its later periods." Thus the two periods of activity are conceived to be at the two opposite poles of a sphere which in some way represents for him the system of Nature.); I have not a doubt that before many months are over I shall be longing for the most dishonest species as being more honest than the honestest theories. One remark more. If you feel any interest, or can get any one else to feel any interest on the aberrant genera question, I should think the most interesting way would be to take aberrant genera in any great natural family, and test the average number of species to the genera in that family.

How I wish we lived near each other! I should so like a talk with you on geographical distribution, taken in its greatest features. I have been trying from land productions to take a very general view of the world, and I should so like to see how far it agrees with plants.

LETTER 42. TO MRS. LYELL.

(42/1. Mrs. Lyell is a daughter of the late Mr. Leonard Horner, and widow of Lieut. — Col. Lyell, a brother of Sir Charles.)

Down, January 26th {1856}.

I shall be very glad to be of any sort of use to you in regard to the beetles. But first let me thank you for your kind note and offer of specimens to my children. My boys are all butterfly hunters; and all young and ardent lepidopterists despise, from the bottom of their souls, coleopterists.

The simplest plan for your end and for the good of entomology, I should think, would be to offer the collection to Dr. J.E. Gray for the British Museum on condition that a perfect set was made out for you. If the collection was at all valuable, I should think he would be very glad to have this done. Whether any third set would be worth making out would depend on the value of the collection. I do not suppose that you expect the insects to be named, for that would be a most serious labour. If you do not approve of this scheme, I should think it very likely that Mr. Waterhouse would think it worth his while to set a series for you, retaining duplicates for himself; but I say this only on a venture. You might trust Mr. Waterhouse implicitly, which I fear, as {illegible} goes, is more than can be said for all entomologists. I presume, if you thought of either scheme, Sir Charles Lyell could easily see the gentlemen and arrange it; but, if not, I could do so when next I come to town, which, however, will not be for three or four weeks.

With respect to giving your children a taste for Natural History, I will venture one remark — viz., that giving them specimens in my opinion would tend to destroy such taste. Youngsters must be themselves collectors to acquire a taste; and if I had a collection of English lepidoptera, I would be systematically most miserly, and not give my boys half a dozen butterflies in the year. Your eldest has the brow of an observer, if there be the least truth in phrenology. We are all better, but we have been of late a poor household.

LETTER 43. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down {1855}.

I should have less scruple in troubling you if I had any confidence what my work would turn out. Sometimes I think it will be good, at other times I really feel as much ashamed of myself as the author of the "Vestiges" ought to be of himself. I know well that your kindness and friendship would make you do a great deal for me, but that is no reason that I should be unreasonable. I cannot and ought not to forget that all your time is employed in work certain to be valuable. It is superfluous in me to say that I enjoy exceedingly writing to you, and that your answers are of the greatest possible service to me. I return with many thanks the proof on Aquilegia (43/1. This seems to refer to the discussion on the genus Aquilegia in Hooker and Thomson's "Flora Indica," 1855, Volume I., Systematic Part, page 44. The authors' conclusion is that "all the European and many of the Siberian forms generally recognised belong to one very variable species." With regard to cirripedes, Mr. Darwin spoke of "certain just perceptible differences which blend together and constitute varieties and not species" ("Life and Letters," I., page 379).): it has interested me much. It is exactly like my barnacles; but for my particular purpose, most unfortunately, both Kolreuter and Gartner have worked chiefly on A. vulgaris and canadensis and atro-purpurea, and these are just the species that you seem not to have studied. N.B. Why do you not let me buy the Indian Flora? You are too magnificent.

Now for a short ride on my chief (at present) hobbyhorse, viz. aberrant genera. What you say under your remarks on Lepidodendron seems just the case that I want, to give some sort of evidence of what we both believe in, viz. how groups came to be anomalous or aberrant; and I think some sort of proof is required, for I do not believe very many naturalists would at all admit our view.

Thank you for the caution on large anomalous genera first catching attention. I do not quite agree with your "grave objection to the whole process," which is "that if you multiply the anomalous species by 100, and divide the normal by the same, you will then reverse the names..." For, to take an example, Ornithorhynchus and Echidna would not be less aberrant if each had a dozen (I do not say 100, because we have no such cases in the animal kingdom) species instead of one. What would really make these two genera less anomalous would be the creation of many genera and sub-families round and radiating from them on all sides. Thus if Australia were destroyed, Didelphys in S. America would be wonderfully anomalous (this is your case with Proteaceae), whereas now there are so many genera and little sub-families of Marsupiata that the group cannot be called aberrant or anomalous. Sagitta (and the earwig) is one of the most anomalous animals in the world, and not a bit the less because there are a dozen species. Now, my point (which, I think is a slightly new point of view) is, if it is extinction which has made the genus anomalous, as a general rule the same causes of extinction would allow the existence of only a few species in such genera. Whenever we meet (which will be on the 23rd {at the} Club) I shall much like to hear whether this strikes you as sound. I feel all the time on the borders of a circle of truism. Of course I could not think of such a request, but you might possibly: — if Bentham does not think the whole subject rubbish, ask him some time to pick out the dozen most anomalous genera in the Leguminosae, or any great order of which there is a monograph by which I could calculate the ordinary percentage of species to genera. I am the more anxious, as the more I enquire, the fewer are the cases in which it can be done. It cannot be done in birds, or, I fear, in mammifers. I doubt much whether in any other class of insects {other than Curculionidae}.

I saw your nice notice of poor Forbes in the "Gardeners' Chronicle," and I see in the "Athenaeum" a notice of meeting on last Saturday of his friends. Of course I shall wish to subscribe as soon as possible to any memorial...

I have just been testing practically what disuse does in reducing parts. I have made {skeletons} of wild and tame duck (oh the smell of well-boiled, high duck!), and I find the tame duck ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight; but it has only 317, or 43 grains too little, or 1/7 of {its} own two wings too little in weight. This seems rather interesting to me. (43/2. On the conclusions drawn from these researches, see Mr. Platt Ball, "The Effects of Use and Disuse" (Nature Series), 1890, page 55. With regard to his pigeons, Darwin wrote, in November 1855: "I love them to that extent that I cannot bear to kill and skeletonise them.")

P.S. — I do not know whether you will think this worth reading over. I have worked it out since writing my letter, and tabulate the whole.

21 orders with 1 genus, having 7.95 species (or 4.6?).

29 orders with 2 genera, having 15.05 species on an average.

23 orders each with 3 genera, and these genera include on an average 8.2 species.

20 orders each with 4 genera, and these genera include on an average 12.2 species.

27 orders each with above 50 genera (altogether 4716 genera), and these genera on an average have 9.97 species.

From this I conclude, whether there be many or few genera in an order, the number of species in a genus is not much affected; but perhaps when {there is} only one genus in an order it will be affected, and this will depend whether the {genus} Erythroxylon be made a family of.

LETTER 44. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, April 8th {1856}.

I have been particularly glad to get your splendid eloge of Lindley. His name had been lately passing through my head, and I had hoped that Miers would have proposed him for the Royal medal. I most entirely agree that the Copley (44/1. The late Professor Lindley never attained the honour of the Copley medal. The Royal medal was awarded to him in 1857.) is more appropriate, and I daresay he would not have valued the Royal. From skimming through many botanical books, and from often consulting the "Vegetable Kingdom," I had (ignorant as I am) formed the highest opinion of his claims as a botanist. If Sharpey will stick up strong for him, we should have some chance; but the natural sciences are but feebly represented in the Council. Sir P. Egerton, I daresay, would be strong for him. You know Bell is out. Now, my only doubt is, and I hope that you will consider this, that the natural sciences being weak on the Council, and (I fancy) the most powerful man in the Council, Col. S{abine}, being strong against Lindley, whether we should have any chance of succeeding. It would be so easy to name some eminent man whose name would be well-known to all the physicists. Would Lindley hear of and dislike being proposed for the Copley and not succeeding? Would it not be better on this view to propose him for the Royal? Do think of this. Moreover, if Lindley is not proposed for the Royal, I fear both Royal medals would go {to} physicists; for I, for one, should not like to propose another zoologist, though Hancock would be a very good man, and I fancy there would be a feeling against medals to two botanists. But for whatever Lindley is proposed, I will do my best. We will talk this over here.

LETTER 45. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 9th {1856}.

...With respect to Huxley, I was on the point of speaking to Crawford and Strezlecki (who will be on Committee of the Athenaeum) when I bethought me of how Owen would look and what he would say. Cannot you fancy him, with slow and gentle voice, asking "Will Mr. Crawford tell me what Mr. Huxley has done, deserving this honour; I only know that he differs from, and disputes the authority of Cuvier, Ehrenberg, and Agassiz as of no weight at all." And when I began to tell Mr. Crawford what to say, I was puzzled, and could refer him only to some excellent papers in the "Phil. Trans." for which the medal had been awarded. But I doubt, with an opposing faction, whether this would be considered enough, for I believe real scientific merit is not thought enough, without the person is generally well known. Now I want to hear what you deliberately think on this head: it would be bad to get him proposed and then rejected; and Owen is very powerful.

LETTER 46. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down {1856}.

I have got the Lectures, and have read them. (46/1. The reference is presumably to the Royal Institution Lectures given in 1854-56. Those which we have seen — namely, those reprinted in the "Scientific Memoirs," Volume I. — "On the Common Plan of Animal Form," page 281; "On certain Zoological Arguments, etc." page 300; "On Natural History as Knowledge, Discipline, and Power," page 305, do not seem to us to contain anything likely to offend; but Falconer's attack in the "Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist." June 1856, on the last-named lecture, shows strong feeling. A reply by Mr. Huxley appeared in the July number of the same Journal. The most heretical discussion from a modern standpoint is at page 311, where he asks how it is conceivable that the bright colours of butterflies and shells or the elegant forms of Foraminifera can possibly be of service to their possessors; and it is this which especially struck Darwin, judging by the pencil notes on his copy of the Lecture.) Though I believe, as far as my knowledge goes, that Huxley is right, yet I think his tone very much too vehement, and I have ventured to say so in a note to Huxley. I had not thought of these lectures in relation to the Athenaeum (46/2. Mr. Huxley was in 1858 elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, which provides for the annual election of "a certain number of persons of distinguished eminence in science, literature, or the arts, or for public services."), but I am inclined quite to agree with you, and that we had better pause before anything is said...(N.B. I found Falconer very indignant at the manner in which Huxley treated Cuvier in his Royal Institution lectures; and I have gently told Huxley so.) I think we had better do nothing: to try in earnest to get a great naturalist into the Athenaeum and fail, is far worse than doing nothing.

How strange, funny, and disgraceful that nearly all (Faraday and Sir J. Herschel at least exceptions) our great men are in quarrels in couplets; it never struck me before...

LETTER 47. C. LYELL TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(47/1. In the "Life and Letters," II., page 72, is given a letter (June 16th, 1856) to Lyell, in which Darwin exhales his indignation over the "extensionists" who created continents ad libitum to suit the convenience of their theories. On page 74 a fuller statement of his views is given in a letter dated June 25th. We have not seen Lyell's reply to this, but his reply to Darwin's letter of June 16th is extant, and is here printed for the first time.)

53, Harley Street, London, June 17th, 1856.

I wonder you did not also mention D. Sharpe's paper (47/2. "On the Last Elevation of the Alps, etc." ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume XII., 1856, page 102.), just published, by which the Alps were submerged as far as 9,000 feet of their present elevation above the sea in the Glacial period and then since uplifted again. Without admitting this, you would probably convey the alpine boulders to the Jura by marine currents, and if so, make the Alps and Jura islands in the glacial sea. And would not the Glacial theory, as now very generally understood, immerse as much of Europe as I did in my original map of Europe, when I simply expressed all the area which at some time or other had been under water since the commencement of the Eocene period? I almost suspect the glacial submergence would exceed it.

But would not this be a measure of the movement in every other area, northern (arctic), antarctic, or tropical, during an equal period — oceanic or continental? For the conversion of sea into land would always equal the turning of much land into sea.

But all this would be done in a fraction of the Pliocene period; the Glacial shells are barely 1 per cent. extinct species. Multiply this by the older Pliocene and Miocene epochs.

You also forget an author who, by means of atolls, contrived to submerge archipelagoes (or continents?), the mountains of which must originally have differed from each other in height 8,000 (or 10,000?) feet, so that they all just rose to the surface at one level, or their sites are marked by buoys of coral. I could never feel sure whether he meant this tremendous catastrophe, all brought about by what Sedgwick called "Lyell's niggling operations," to have been effected during the era of existing species of corals. Perhaps you can tell me, for I am really curious to know...(47/3. The author referred to is of course Darwin.)

Now, although there is nothing in my works to warrant the building up of continents in the Atlantic and Pacific even since the Eocene period, yet, as some of the rocks in the central Alps are in part Eocene, I begin to think that all continents and oceans may be chiefly, if not all, post-Eocene, and Dana's "Atlantic Ocean" of the Lower Silurian is childish (see the Anniversary Address, 1856). (47/4. Probably Dana's Anniversary Address to the "American Association for the Advancement of Science," published in the "Proceedings" 1856.) But how far you are at liberty to call up continents from "the vasty deep" as often as you want to convey a Helix from the United States to Europe in Miocene or Pliocene periods is a question; for the ocean is getting deeper of late, and Haughton says the mean depth is eleven miles! by his late paper on tides. (47/5. "On the Depth of the Sea deducible from Tidal Observations" ("Proc. Irish Acad." Volume VI., page 354, 1853-54).) I shall be surprised if this turns out true by soundings.

I thought your mind was expanding so much in regard to time that you would have been going ahead in regard to the possibility of mountain-chains being created in a fraction of the period required to convert a swan into a goose, or vice versa. Nine feet did the Rimutaka chain of New Zealand gain in height in January, 1855, and a great earthquake has occurred in New Zealand every seven years for half a century nearly. The "Washingtonia" (Californian conifer) (47/6. Washingtonia, or Wellingtonia, better known as Sequoia. Asa Gray, writing in 1872, states his belief that "no Sequoia now alive can sensibly antedate the Christian era" ("Scientific Papers," II., page 144).) lately exhibited was four thousand years old, so that one individual might see a chain of hills rise, and rise with it, much {more} a species — and those islands which J. Hooker describes as covered with New Zealand plants three hundred (?) miles to the N.E. (?) of New Zealand may have been separated from the mainland two or three or four generations of Washingtonia ago.