Instinctive responses in animals.
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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.
Instinctive responses in animals.
Discusses his health following a visit to Dr C[lark?]. Has made an appointment for CD.
Concerned about GHD’s health. Sends a prescription for a cough mixture.
Distressed by the poor health of GHD and Horace. Asks them to come home.
Anxious to have GHD come home because of his poor health. Recommends Huxley’s physician (Andrew Clark) – an advocate of milk diet.
CD particularly wishes to see JT "On business not connected with himself" [the fund for Huxley’s holiday]. Asks whether CD may call that afternoon. GHD adds postscript saying CD very fatigued. He hopes JT can come to see CD instead, but he should not mention that GHD suggested it.
Corrects chemical concentrations CD has been using [in insectivorous plant experimentation].
Thinks highly of GHD’s article [probably "On beneficial restrictions to liberty of marriage", Contemp. Rev. 22 (1873): 412–26]. A good omen for the future.
Writes for CD to thank RS for his very valuable information.
Criticises CD’s letter to Nature ["Complemental males in certain cirripedes", Collected papers 2: 177–82].
On the elimination of useless parts.
GHD fails to see the point of CD’s use of the law of distribution about a mean.
Sends table showing relative force of impact of weight dropped on a plane inclined at different angles.
Sends CD a draft of a letter to Nature [see 9087], which he thinks expresses CD’s meaning.
CD thinks GHD’s letter is an excellent clarification [of CD’s conjectural view on the elimination of useless parts in species], but does not want to publish it as his [CD’s] own. Asks GHD to think carefully before he publishes it.
Sends, with CD’s approval, a clarification of CD’s explanation of how useless organs might diminish [see 9061]. Using Quetelet’s law of normal distribution GHD shows how horns of cattle, having become useless, would gradually diminish and finally disappear.
Has decided to send the letter ["Variation of organs", Nature 8 (1873): 505].
Writes of his poor health and problems of settling in at Trinity.
Asks GHD whether he can tell him what inclination a polished or waxy leaf ought to hold to the horizon in order to let vertical rain rebound off as much as possible.
On bodies of varying elasticity bouncing off inclined planes [see 9096].
CD gives his criticisms of GHD’s essay on religion and the moral sense. Urges him to delay publishing for some months and then to consider whether it is new and important enough to counterbalance the effects of its publication. J. S. Mill would never have influenced the age as he has done had he not refrained from expressing his religious convictions. Cites John Morley’s Life of Voltaire [1872]: direct attacks produce little effect; real good comes from slow and silent side attacks. "My advice is to pause, pause, pause."
"It is a fearfully difficult moral problem about speaking out on religion, & I have never been able to make up my mind."
An Irishman, a "grand breeder" of short-horns, declared at lunch that CD’s books had been "a great help to [him] in breeding!"
CD writes about organising a subscription for Dohrn’s Zoological Station at Naples. Has drawn up a draft circular for naturalists to sign to show their support for the Station.