Answers CD’s questions.
Reception of Descent. Evolution accepted everywhere; descent of man accepted calmly.
Morocco plans.
Fears for Huxley, who is overworked.
Showing 61–72 of 72 items
The Charles Darwin Collection
The Darwin Correspondence Project is publishing letters written by and to the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Complete transcripts of letters are being made available through the Project’s website (www.darwinproject.ac.uk) after publication in the ongoing print edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (Cambridge University Press 1985–). Metadata and summaries of all known letters (c. 15,000) appear in Ɛpsilon, and the full texts of available letters can also be searched, with links to the full texts.
Answers CD’s questions.
Reception of Descent. Evolution accepted everywhere; descent of man accepted calmly.
Morocco plans.
Fears for Huxley, who is overworked.
Thanks for CD’s letter on his review of Descent in the Pall Mall Gazette [21 Mar 1871].
Effects of first impregnation on litters from subsequent pregnancies.
Power of selective breeding to produce different varieties.
Answers to CD’s queries will take time. CD may not be aware of the influence of accommodation on the diameter of the pupil of the eye. Parrots, for example, contract or dilate the pupil independently of amount of light [see Expression, p. 304]. Sends his book on the subject [On the anomalies of accommodation and refraction of the eye (1864)].
Note on errata in first volume of Descent.
More details on children with hairy backs;
reasons for greater mortality rate of male children.
Discusses breeding fancy pigeons from the wild blue rock-dove.
Sends scraps of information. Everything he has sent is unreservedly at CD’s disposal.
On reading Descent was reminded of having seen, on a visit to an idiot asylum with her father [J. S. Henslow], a woman with long pointed ears.
Questions CD’s attribution of a sense of beauty to animals and his use of natural selection to explain phenomena JM feels it more appropriate to describe as social selection.
Many thanks for copy of Descent.
Would like to visit CD when he comes to England.
On the power of concentration to influence body organs.