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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.
Recounts case of parrot whose talking seems to show "power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas" [see Descent, 2d ed., p. 85 n.].
Has not seen CD’s daughter yet. Hopes the fine weather will continue while she is there [in Bournemouth].
Comments on WRG’s MS on ratio of the sexes at birth.
Offers to send J. M. A. Thury’s paper ["Loi de production des sexes", Arch. Sci. Phys. & Nat. 18 (1863): 91–8].
Encloses a letter [7617] to be forwarded to the author of the review of Descent in Pall Mall Gazette.
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.
CD is "bent upon linking the monkey race to us"; DT finds it striking that CD should so resemble an ape.
Sends his work discussing the anatomical seat of the faculty of language [On aphasia (1870)]. Concludes that it may be impossible to find any cerebral centre for speech and that this fact opposes the idea of the descent of man from some lower form.
Recommends a photographer to CD for Expression.
Copy of and note on a picture of Noah’s daughter averting her eyes in shame.
On "moral sense" in Descent.
Ogle will keep JT’s suggestion in mind in observing less hairy races of man and the lower animals.
Asks JT whether he can help Ogle on a troublesome point on the colour of tissues with olfactory nerves, and the relation of colour to the absorption of odours. Does JT’s respirator deprive odorous substances of their smell?
Ogle is unacquainted with JT; would be proud and pleased to call on him. CD likes what little he has seen of him.
Was reminded of CD by his new book [Descent] in a shop;
reports having come on train as far as Bromley in previous summer, but found no means of travelling the seven miles to Down. Might try again.
JT suggests that Ogle call upon him so that they can arrange experiments suitable for his purpose.
Parallel between CD’s account of morality [in Descent], of social instinct preceding selfishness, and Henry Maine’s account of notions of property of a community preceding individual property [in Ancient law (1861)].
Thanks for Descent.
He is "driven" from his post.
He has homologised the face muscles of cetaceans and man. Although the former do not show expression, the nose and upper lip muscles are highly developed.
Quotes authority on the decline in height of French army recruits.
Dutch translation [of Descent].
Notes about reversion.
Hermaphroditism in fishes.
Polydactylism.
Rereading Journal of researches, particularly on Buenos Aires and varieties of cattle observed there [pp. 145–6]. Reports a case of a cow in which the characters of the niata and two other breeds were combined.
Admits pointer illustration is faulty.
Discusses shame, remorse, social instincts, approbation, and other topics discussed in Descent, ch. 4. "But as yet I nail my colours to the mast."
French translation of Descent all but complete.
Hopes translation of Origin will soon be finished.