Short reply to ARW’s long letter. Reaffirms belief in sexual selection.
Postscript on M.-J.-P. Flourens’ "little dull book against me" [Examen du livre de M. Darwin (1864)].
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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.
Short reply to ARW’s long letter. Reaffirms belief in sexual selection.
Postscript on M.-J.-P. Flourens’ "little dull book against me" [Examen du livre de M. Darwin (1864)].
His distress that his engagement has been broken off.
Sends copies of two papers ["On the parrots of the Malayan region", Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. (1864): 279–97;
"On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago", J. R. Geogr. Soc. 33 (1863): 217–34].
Commends ARW’s papers on parrots
and on the theory of geographical distribution [see 4750].
Wild pigs in Aru Islands must have been introduced and later ran wild. Does ARW have an opinion on the subject?
Sends papers with comments. Convinced that the Aru pig is a species peculiar to New Guinea fauna, not a domestic animal that ran wild.
Admires CD’s paper ["Three forms of Lythrum", Collected papers 2: 106–31].
Exchange of photographs.
Aru pigs present perplexing case, whether wild or domesticated.
Thanks CD for paper ["Climbing plants"].
Reports case of variation becoming at once hereditary – a crested blackbird with crested young.
Crests as inherited variations; domesticated birds.
Belief in value of travel journals.
Current reading.
Information concerning improvements in the Reader under new sponsorship.
Current reading and work [on pigeons for Ibis 1 (1865): 365–400, and catalogue of his collection of birds].
Book of travels postponed indefinitely.
Welcomes ARW’s paper on pigeons ["On the pigeons of the Malay Archipelago", Ibis 1 (1865): 365–400].
Influence of monkeys on distribution of pigeons and parrots.
Asks ARW to explain a passage in his paper on Malayan Papilionidae [Trans. Linn. Soc. Lond. 25 (1866): 1–71] on how dimorphic forms are produced. CD knows of varieties "that will not blend or intermix", but which produce offspring quite like either parent.
ARW’s remarks on geographical distribution in Celebes "will give a cold shudder to the immutable naturalists".
Presses ARW to work on his travel journal.
ARW’s simple explanation of dimorphic forms is satisfactory.
On "non-blending" of certain varieties, CD thinks ARW has not understood him. He does not refer to fertility. He crossed two differently coloured varieties of peas and "got both varieties perfect, but none intermediate". Something like this must occur in ARW’s butterflies.
Looks forward to reading Variation.
Explains how two or more female forms occur in one species through selection. The physiological problem remains of how each produces offspring like the other without intermediates. Is not CD’s case of varieties that will not blend the physiological test of a species needed for "complete proof of the origin of species"?
"Travels" postponed.
Lengthy analysis of sources of misunderstanding of natural selection. Advocacy of Spencer’s term "survival of the fittest" instead of "Natural Selection". ARW urges CD to stress frequency of variations.
CD considers "the survival of the fittest" as alternative term to "Natural Selection". Reflections upon misunderstanding and his own ambiguity.
Health improved; can now work "some hours daily".
Thanks CD for 4th ed. of Origin.
Discusses abnormal sexual characters produced by mimicry. ARW’s papers on the subject.
Agassiz’s "marvellous" Amazonian glacier theory.
CD now acknowledges that the sometimes very great sexual, i.e., ornamental, differences in fishes offer a difficulty to the view that females are not brightly coloured on account of the danger to propagation of the species.
Asks why caterpillars are sometimes beautifully coloured. It poses a problem for view that sexual selection is the explanation of colours of male butterflies.
More on mimetic butterflies.
Protective role of colours in caterpillars and butterflies. Sexual differences in colours of butterflies.
ARW’s explanation of protective value of conspicuous coloration is ingenious.
CD still holds to sexual selection with respect to beauty in male butterflies.
Sexual selection and the races of man.
Expression of emotions is another subject he plans to include in his essay [Descent].
Asks ARW to suggest an observer in Malay Archipelago to whom he might send queries [on expression].
ARW responds to CD’s list of queries about expression. Suggests acquiring informants through publishing the queries in newspapers. His doubts about their importance.
Has submitted caterpillar question to Entomological Society.
Asks to be kept informed on gaudy caterpillars.
Problems of his work on man; scope and role of sexual selection.
Indulgence of interest in expression is simply a "hobby-horse". Will see whether he can get queries inserted in an Indian newspaper.