Ɛpsilon

From Raphael Meldola   26 January 1878

Atlas Works, | Hackney Wick, | London, N.E. | Offices, | 50, Old Broad Street, | E.C.

Jan. 26th. 1878

My dear Sir,

Herewith I return the Dec. no. of Kosmos for the loan of which I am extremely obliged.

I look upon Fritz Müller’s conclusions as confirmations of a principle long ago laid down by you in the “Origin of Species”. You there state that the larva of an insect may be regarded as an active embryo. From this it follows that a larva (or a pupa) can become adapted to its environment quite independently of the perfect insect.1

I am exceedingly obliged for the kind permission which you have given me to make use of Fritz Müllers last letter to you. It contains many new & interesting observations which will enrich our “Proceedings” & thereby become permanently recorded in a form more convenient for future reference should you at any future time desire to make use of them.2

His (F. M’s) observation of the serrated costal margin of ♂ Callidryas is a new fact. It has been known for some time as existing in Prioneris (Wallace) & Pyrrhosticta (Butler).3

I was delighted to hear Prof. Huxley at the Royal Institution last night draw a comparison between Harvey & yourself—you being among the few who have seen their ideas take root & flourish in their own time.4

With the greatest respect, | I am, dear Sir, | Yours very truly, | R. Meldola.

1
See letters to Raphael Meldola, 1 January [1878] and 3 January 1878. CD had wanted Meldola to see the third part of Fritz Müller’s ‘Beobachtungen an brasilianischen Schmetterlingen’ (Observations on Brazilian butterflies; F. Müller 1877a), which confirmed August Weismann’s views on the adaptation of caterpillars to their environment independently of the adaptation of other stages. See also Origin, p. 440.
2
See letter to Raphael Meldola, 11 January [1878] and n. 1. Meldola read portions of Müller’s letter to CD of [27 November 1877] (see Correspondence vol. 25) to the Entomological Society of London on 6 February 1878 (Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (Proceedings) (1878): ii–iii).
3
Müller had observed that the costal margin of the front wings of the butterfly genus Callidryas and some other members of the family Pierinae (now Pieridae) was serrated in the males but not in the females (Correspondence vol. 25, letter from Fritz Müller, [27 November 1877]). For Alfred Russel Wallace’s observation on Prioneris, see Wallace 1867, p. 314. For Arthur Gardiner Butler’s observation on Pyrrhosticta, see Butler 1872, p. 86. Pyrrhosticta was Butler’s suggested name for species of Papilio in which males but not females had serrations on the front-wing costal margins; he indicated Papilio laetitia as the type species. Callidryas is a synonym of Phoebis.
4
Thomas Henry Huxley lectured at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on 25 January 1878, in honour of the tercentenary of William Harvey’s birth (L. Huxley 1900, 1: 485). He also published articles on Harvey in Fortnightly Review (T. H. Huxley 1878a) and Nature (T. H. Huxley 1878b). In Fortnightly Review, he compared objections to Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood to objections to CD’s theory of natural selection (T. H. Huxley 1878a, p. 182).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11332,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11332