Ɛpsilon

From A. W. Malm   26 January 1877

Göteborg. Museum of history naturelle.

26. 1. 77.

Prof Dr Charles Darwin.

Dear Friend and highly estimated College!

I have the honour herewith to send to You my printed papers; 1, On the development of the Rajæ, and, 2, on Monœcious fishes, viz. Scomber scombrus and Clupea harengus.1

I think that that last fenomen, will be of much importance for the Scientia vera. Monoecious vertebrata are now abnormals fenomena only therfore that this fenomena very seldom are to be met.2 In the prior times of the development of the earth this fenomen was everywhere ordinary, and therefor a normal character for the organisated life, the product of the inorganisated.

The fenomen by the vertebrates are a appearance of tendencity of a development backwards, or no a development in some parts of the systems of the body.

My friend at Stockholm, the coleopterolog O. J. Fåhræus, but our antagonists tell my that you have citated my paper on the devolepment of the pleuronectoides, but he hav not told my the titel on your work.3 Will You have the godness to from your own hand send my a copy! then will i be wery glad.

Your trouly | Dr A. W. Malm.

The greath Linné was a very distinguished naturalist [ :] “Darwinist”. He placed directly, the most developed wild Simiæ, in the Genus Homo!4

A book, on descendent of domesticated or cultivated plantes and animals, shortly and concisely wroten, for the larg. publicum, were of a great importance in this days. The parallelismus between the man, the cat, the horse &:cet and our most common Cerealia-plants are evident. The Cat, or ewerywhere domesticated organismus, is no more a product of a isolated “creation” at the mans idem.

1
Malm’s papers, ‘Bidrag till kännedom om utvecklingen af Rajæ’ (Contribution to knowledge about the development of Rajæ; Malm 1876a) and ‘Om monoecism hos fiskar’ (On monoecism in fishes; Malm 1876b) were published in Öfversigt af Kongl. Vetenskaps-Akademiens Förhandlingar. CD’s copy of Malm 1876a has not been found, but his annotated copy of Malm 1876b is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. In Malm 1876a, Malm described embryonic development in Raja clavata (thornback ray). In Malm 1876b, he described the gonads in male, female, and monoecious (possessing both male and female gonads) specimens of Scomber scombrus (Atlantic mackerel) and in monoecious specimens of Clupea harengus (Atlantic herring).
2
Scientia vera: true knowledge (Latin). Most vertebrates are gonochoristic, that is, they have separate sexes, but among teleost (bony) fishes, several forms of monoecism had been observed, including simultaneous hermaphroditism, where male and female gametes exist at the same time, and sequential hermaphroditism, where individuals change sex over time (see Descent 2d ed., p. 161 n. 28; on different patterns of hermaphroditism, see Avise and Mank 2009).
3
Olof Immanuel Fåhraeus may have seen a reference to Malm’s paper ‘Bidrag till kännedom af Pleuronektoidernas utveckling och byggnad’ (Contribution to knowledge of the development and structure of the Pleuronectidae; Malm 1867) in Origin 6th ed., pp. 186–7. A copy of a manuscript translation of large portions of Malm 1867 is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. Pleuronectidae is the family of righteye flounders.
4
Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) included the chimpanzee within the genus Homo (Homo troglodytes, Linnaeus 1766–8, 1: 33; in modern classification, the chimpanzee is Pan troglodytes). In a letter to Johann Georg Gmelin of 25 February 1747, Linnaeus challenged Gmelin to point out a single generic difference between man and simian based on the principles of natural history (‘Sed quaero a Te et Toto orbe differentiam genericam inter hominem et Simiam, quae ex principiis Historiae naturalis. Ego certissime nullam novi’; The Linnaean Correspondence, Centre internationale d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, L0783; linnaeus.c18.net/Letters/index.php, accessed 9 October 2015).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10816,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10816