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To W. D. Fox   14 August [1875]1

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

Aug. 14th

My dear Fox

You will remember telling me (& I have quoted the fact) that you had seen a dozen instances of white cats with blue eyes being deaf:2 now can you by an extraordinary chance remember the sex of any of them; as Mr Lawson Tait says it is only males which are thus affected.3

Ever yours | In Haste | C. Darwin

1
The year is established by the printed letterhead, which is of a sort that CD used between 1875 and 1882, and by the fact that CD cited Fox’s reply to this letter in Variation 2d ed. 2: 322 n. 24; CD was working on the second edition of Variation in the summer of 1875.
2
See Variation 2: 329.
3
Lawson Tait had published letters in the Pall Mall Gazette, 26 February 1868, p. 771, and in Scientific Opinion, 7 July 1869, p. 113, claiming that deafness was confined to male white cats (though not all male white cats were deaf), and that eye colour was a matter of indifference. There are lightly annotated clippings of the letters in DAR 164: 183a and 183b. Fox’s reply to this letter was published in Correspondence vol. 18, Supplement, with the date 16 August [1860?]; it should now be redated 16 August [1875].

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 white] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10121F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10121F