Ɛpsilon

From Raphael Meldola   6 February 1879

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

Feb. 6th. 1879

My dear Mr. Darwin,

After the great number of years that we have corresponded (I think 1870 is the date of the first letter I ever had from you) I hope you will in future grant me the privilege of thus addressing you instead of the more formal & thoroughly Anglican “Sir”.1 I have been so busy during the last week getting out the index &c of Part IV of the Trans. Ent. Soc. that I have had no time to attend to Fritz Müller’s article in “Kosmos” & I therefore will beg for an extension of the time for keeping your copy of that publication— should you want it particularly a post-card will ensure its return at the shortest notice. I think I explained to you that I propose preparing an abstract of the article either for “Nature” or our own “proceedings”.2

Now as regards Weismann’s book—Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co. have agreed to bring out the book—we bear the risk jointly— They have made it a condition that subscription-circulars should be issued so that I am driven to the ‘begging’ resource after all. The English edition is to be a smaller size* than the German— this will I think be acknowledged as an improvement. The matter will be printed in full as given by Weismann but the plates are to be reduced— The latter have been commenced under the supervision of Prof. Weismann.3 The first essay on Seasonal-Dimorphism is nearly completed—i.e. the first rough translation. I am going to add the results obtained in connection with this subject by Mr. W. H. Edwards in his exps. on the breeding of Papilio Ajax & other species. I suppose you have seen the last part of his “Butterflies of N. America” containing the results of his exps. on P. Tharos.4

By the way; I came across a paper of S. H. Scudder’s the other day—“Antigeny, or Sexual Dimorphism in Butterflies”—in which he brings arguments against the Sexual Selec. theory of the colours &c of these insects. I do not know whether you have seen the paper— I can let you have the exact reference if you would care to have it. It was published in the “Canadian Entomologist”.5

Mr. Wallace’s article in this month’s “Nineteenth Century” is decidedly good.6

Yours sincerely, | R. Meldola.

* Demy 8vo.

1
The earliest extant correspondence between CD and Meldola is CD’s reply to a missing letter from Meldola; see Correspondence vol. 19, letter to Raphael Meldola, 28 January [1871].
2
Meldola was secretary of the Entomological Society of London. The proceedings and index for 1878 (pp. i–lxxxviii) follow part 4 (December 1878, pp. 259–335) in the 1878 Transactions of Entomological Society of London. CD had lent Meldola Fritz Müller’s Kosmos article on sexual dimorphism, ‘Epicalia Acontius. Ein ungleiches Ehepaar’ (Epicalia Acontius: a dissimilar couple; F. Müller 1879a); see letter to Raphael Meldola, 20 January 1879. Meldola’s abstract of Müller 1879 appeared with the title ‘Butterflies with dissimilar sexes’ in Nature, 24 April 1879, pp. 586–8.
3
Meldola was working on a translation of August Weismann’s Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie (Studies in the theory of descent); see Correspondence vol. 26, letter to Raphael Meldola, 14 December [1878]. The translation (Weismann 1880–2) was published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington in demy octavo format; the German original (Weismann 1875–6) was royal octavo. For Weismann’s supervision of the translation, see Churchill 2015, p. 162.
4
Weismann’s essay on seasonal dimorphism in butterflies (Weismann 1875–6, vol. 1) was the first part to appear in translation (Weismann 1880–2, part 1); William Henry Edwards’s observations on different forms of Papilio ajax (a synonym of Protographium marcellus, the zebra swallowtail) and Phyciodes tharos (the pearl crescent) were included as an appendix (ibid., pp. 126–48). Edwards’s breeding experiments with Papilio ajax were described in his Butterflies of North America (Edwards 1868–72, part 9; his experiments on Phyciodes tharos were described in Butterflies of North America, second series (Edwards 1884), part 7. Part 7 was published in 1878. Both parts are in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
5
Samuel Hubbard Scudder’s article was actually published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Scudder 1877).
6
Alfred Russel Wallace’s ‘Animals and their native countries’ (Wallace 1879) appeared in the February 1879 issue of Nineteenth Century.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11861,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11861