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To J. G. F. Riedel   24 September 1875

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Sep. 24/75.

Dear Sir,

The fact that you have been so kind as to communicate to me is most extra-ordinary, and I can offer no explanation of it.1 With my views on the origin of man, the wild and fanciful notion crossed my mind, that the spots of colour are due to some ancient progenitors having had their buttocks colousred.2 I would strongly advise you to send a full account of the case to some ethnological society; with measurements of the spots, and how far they are variable in size or intensity of colour and especially whether thay occur on the backs of all the infants, stating how many cases you have observed.3 With respect to the inherited effects of circumcission I have received such different accounts I hardly know what to believe; but I shall by very glad to quote what you say in a new edition of my Variations under Domestication which I am now preparing.4

With my best wishes for the succes of your observations. | I remain dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin.

Copy

1
See Correspondence vol. 23, letter from J. G. F. Riedel, 30 June 1875. Riedel had told CD he had observed two dark blue spots on the backs of infants of one of the peoples of Celebes (now Sulawesi).
2
For CD’s interest in colour in primates, see Descent 2d ed., pp. 537–9, and Nature, 2 November 1876, pp. 18–19.
3
An abstract of a letter on the subject from Riedel was published in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1901 (J. G. F. Riedel 1901).
4
See Variation 2d ed. 1: 467. The second edition of Variation was published in early 1876 (Publishers’ Circular, 1 March 1876, p. 168), but with an 1875 imprint.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10169F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10169F