To J.-H. Fabre   20 February 1880

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

Feb 20/80

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your kind letter and am delighted that you will try the experiment of rotation.1 It is a very curious that such a belief should be held about cats in your country. I never heard of anything of the kind in England.2 I was led, as I believe, to think of the experiment from having read in Wrangel’s Travels in Siberia of the wonderful power which the Samoyedes possess of keeping their direction in a fog whilst travelling in a tortuous line through broken ice.3 With respect to the cats, I have seen an account that in Belgium there is a society which gives prizes to the cat which can soonest find its way home, & for this purpose they are carried to distant parts of the city—4 Here would be a capital opportunity for trying rotation.

I am extremely glad to hear that your book will probably be translated into English.5

With much respect | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

P.S. | I shall be much pleased to hear the result of your experiments

LS

1
See letter from J.-H. Fabre, 18 February 1880. The experiment was designed to test the homing instinct of insects.
2
Fabre had described a practice common among local people of turning a cat round in a bag to disorient it so it would not return to a previous location (letter from J.-H. Fabre, 18 February 1880).
3
Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel had written an account of his exploration of Polar regions (Wrangel 1840) that included several accounts of the dense fog and the difficulties of navigating in it. Samoyedes (now more commonly Samoyedic people) are closely related ethnic groups of traditionally nomadic people of northern Siberia.
4
The Belgian practice of cat racing was described in an article in the Pictorial Times, 16 June 1860; the article was reprinted in a book on cats (Weir 1889, p. 218). According to the article the prizes were a ham and a silver spoon to the owner whose cat found its way home soonest.
5
In the event, an English translation of Fabre’s Souvenirs entomologiques (Fabre 1879) appeared in 1913 (Fabre 1913).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12494,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12494