Ɛpsilon

To W. H. Flower   25 February 1878

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

Feb. 25. 1878

Dear Flower,

I received the enclosed letter some time ago & the case seems so curious that I asked the writer to send me a wing from one of the offspring, which is herewith enclosed.1 Please to read the letter, & I hope that you will think it worth while to have the bones cleaned & look at them yourself. Until Brown Séquards statements, I could hardly believe that mutilations were ever inherited but now every additional case seems to me worth recording2 Will you be so kind as to send me a few words briefly describing the state of the bones & if there is anything remarkable I would send your account with an extract from Mr Blair’s letter to ‘Nature’.3 Or what would be better, for you to do it yourself, that is if you think it worth while. I do not want the specimen returned.

Believe me, yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

P.S. | If you do not write to Nature please return me the letter, otherwise I do not want it again

LS

1
The letter from Reuben Almond Blair has not been found, but it concerned the apparent inheritance of the effects of injury to a goose (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to R. A. Blair, 27 December 1877).
2
Charles Édouard Brown-Séquard had induced epileptic convulsions in guinea pigs by means of surgical operations; he claimed that the epileptic tendency was transmitted to offspring (Brown-Séquard 1860); see also Variation 2: 24. CD cited Brown-Séquard’s updated summary of his results (Brown-Séquard 1875) in Variation 2d ed. 1: 468–70.
3
For Flower’s description of the bones, see the letter from W. H. Flower, 12 April 1878. No account appeared in Nature.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11375,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11375