Ɛpsilon

To Lawson Tait   2 March 1876

Down

March 2. 1876

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your note.1 I took an extraordinary amount of trouble over two cases and wrote dozens of long letters, and the evidence was so shaky that nothing less than a case closely inspected by highly competent witnesses, and recorded at the time, would in my opinion be sufficient2

In haste, | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

I was most cruelly vexed at my mistake, yet I made formerly as I thought careful enquiries.3

Copy

2
In Variation 2: 14–15, CD had reported cases of supernumerary digits that had been amputated and grew back. While making corrections for the second edition of Variation, he corresponded with Annie Dowie and Alice Margaret Lane Fox about these cases (see Correspondence vol. 23, letter to Annie Dowie, 16 August [1875], and letter from A. M. Lane Fox, 3 August 1875). After consulting with James Paget, he questioned the evidence for the regrowth of amputated digits in Variation 2d ed. 1: 459.
3
CD collected information on polydactylism for chapter 12 of Variation in 1863 (see, for instance, Correspondence vol. 11, letter to T. H. Huxley, 16 February [1863]).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10414,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10414