Ɛpsilon

To George Sim   22 October 1879

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

Oct 22d. 1879

Dear Sir

All cases of inheritance possess some interest, but polydactylism is so common, that there is nothing very remarkable about the cow.—1

Instance of supernumerary mammae in woman (& man) are by no means very rare. I advanced cases in my Descent of man, as some evidence of man being descended from an animal with more than two mammae.— I modified this conclusion in the 2d. Edit, & am now sorry that I did so, for from in a recent & exhaustive paper on the subject in Germany, the author maintains that my first view was correct, & that the statements which made me doubt were erroneous.2

Wishing you success in your pursuit of Science

I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

2
See Descent 1: 125 n. 38 and Descent 2d ed., pp. 36–7 n. 38. Otto Michael Ludwig Leichtenstern wrote that he had confirmed CD’s suspicion that supernumerary mammae in humans were reversions after he discovered in a review of more than 100 cases that 91 per cent occurred on the front of the thorax and in a predictable linear relationship with ordinary mammae (Leichtenstern 1878, p. 239). Leichtenstern’s paper was summarised in Kosmos in August 1878 (Kosmos 3 (1878): 443–7). CD’s copy of this issue of Kosmos is in the unbound journal collection in the Darwin Archive–CUL; it is lightly annotated, including with the words, ‘I have read the original paper somewhere’ (ibid., p. 447). CD’s offprint of Leichtenstern 1878, inscribed by the author, is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL; it is not annotated.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.4 from in] ‘in’ interl
2.5 on the subject] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12267F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12267F