From:
Charles Robert Darwin
To:
Unidentified
Date:
21 Apr 1872
Source of text:
Wellcome Collection (MS.7781/1–32 item 9)
Summary:
[An autograph.] "With Mr Darwin’s compliments."
Contributor:
Darwin Correspondence Project
[An autograph.] "With Mr Darwin’s compliments."
Thanks WM for his letter. CD does not think WM’s principle of [up-tending and down-tending] lines explains the cases of expression of emotions referred to, and, even if it did, the problem would remain as to why the lines should express what WM believes they do.
Arranges a visit to CL.
Has heard from Ashwin Conway Newman of Guy’s Hospital of a case of a child without any prepuce whose father was a renegade, uncircumcised Jew, but whose ancestors had all been Jews. Newman thinks this a good case of inheritance with reversion. JP’s letter [missing] now shows how rash such a conclusion would be.
Thanks for J. D. MacDonald’s paper ["Distribution of invertebrata", Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 21 (1872–3): 218–23].
CD feels lines of genetic connection between animals offer a most difficult problem; Ernst Haeckel may have done mischief by facing the difficulty.
Thanks FdeC for his note and invites criticisms.
At the suggestion of Crichton-Browne CD writes on behalf of his son George, who is making a study of marriages between first cousins and of their offspring to determine the proportion of the latter who may be among the insane, deaf and dumb, idiotic, blind etc. Is GES willing to ask his patients [at the Royal Albert Asylum] for the information relevant to this study?
Agrees to sign FDeC’s certificate for admission to the Royal Society.
Returns FDeC’s certificate for the Royal Society signed.
Asks whether it would be possible for Contemporary Review to republish an article on language from North American Review [119 (1874): 61–88] by William Dwight Whitney which answers F. Max Müller; would pay expense of printing if necessary.
CD has been abused in the Quarterly Review for "amazing ignorance".
CD understands JTK’s reasons [for not republishing W. D. Whitney’s article]. Cannot undertake to write anything himself; he needs rest and is unwilling to enter into controversy.
CD is obliged for a note he will use for a new [2d] edition of Variation [1875].
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