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To Nature   9 April [1880]1

[Abinger Hall, Surrey.]

The Omori Shell Mounds

I have received the enclosed letter from Prof. Morse, with a request that I should forward it to you.2 I hope that it may be published, for the article in Nature to which it refers seemed to me to do very scant justice to Prof. Morse’s work.3 I refer more especially to the evidence adduced by him on cannibali[s]m4 by the ancient inhabitants of Japan—on their platycnemic tibiæ—on their degree of skill in ceramic art—and beyond all other points, on the changes in the molluscan fauna of the islands since the period in question.5

It is a remarkable fact, which incidentally appears in Prof. Morse’s memoir, that several Japanese gentlemen have already formed large collections of the shells of the Archipelago, and have zealously aided him in the investigation of the prehistoric mounds.6 This is a most encouraging omen of the future progress of science in Japan.

Charles Darwin

Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 9

1
The year is established by the publication date of the letter in Nature.
2
Edward Sylvester Morse had enclosed a letter responding to a negative review of Morse 1879 with his letter to CD of 23 March 1880.
3
Frederick Victor Dickins’s review of Morse 1879 was published in Nature, 12 February 1880, p. 350.
4
The ‘s’ is missing in the printed text.
5
On the evidence of cannibalism, see Morse 1879, pp. 17–19. Morse discussed the platycnemic or flattened tibiae characteristic of prehistoric humans and compared the Omori bones with those found at other sites (ibid., pp. 19–21). On changes in the molluscs of the area, see ibid., pp. 23–36.
6
Morse paid tribute to members of the Japanese Archaeological Society and mentioned some of the Japanese collections to which he was given access in Morse 1879, pp. iv, 3.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12571,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12571