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To Annie Dowie   16 August [1875]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

August 16th

My dear Mrs. Dowie

I was very glad to receive your last note; but alas all is of no use! The point of interest is whether additional digits possess a power of regrowth which ordinary digits or bones do not possess.2

Now Sir J. Paget has quite convinced me that the degree of regrowth observed in the case in question is nothing very unusual with bones amputated during a very early age. I must alter what I have published & confess to error, which is an unpleasant operation; but it is ten times worse to think, that had it not been primarily through your very great kindness, & secondarily through Sir J. Paget, I shd. have gone on republishing & confirming an error.3

Therefore once again allow me to thank you cordially for your assistance, & believe me | Dear Mrs. Dowie | Yours faithfully & obliged | Charles Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Annie Dowie, 10 August [1875].
2
See letter to Annie Dowie, 1 August [1875] and n. 5, and letter from Annie Dowie, 10 August [1875]. In Variation 2: 16–17, CD concluded that the power of regrowth of supernumerary digits was analogous to the power of regrowth in the digits of lower vertebrates, and suggested that they were cases of reversion to an ‘enormously remote, lowly-organised, and multidigitate’ progenitor.
3
CD withdrew the detailed but unattributed description in Variation 2: 14–15 of the apparent regrowth of an amputated sixth finger belonging to Dowie’s sister, Alice Chambers, from the second edition; he replaced it with a brief reference, and a retraction of his conclusions, referring to James Paget’s doubts about this and another case (Variation 2d ed., 1: 459; see also letter from James Paget, 14 August 1875).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10119,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10119