Ɛpsilon

To Joseph Sinel   19 July 1881

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

July 19th 1881

Dear Sir

I have never attended in the least to the subject of moles & am therefore sorry that I cannot express an opinion of any value.—1 I shd. have thought that the hair on moles was a secondary effect, owing to some degree of hypertrophy of the skin, for, as far as I can remember moles often or generally rise a little above the general surface. Hairs are sometimes largely developed on the borders of old ulcerated surfaces, where the blood-supply is superabundant.—

If I were in your place I wd not make public your notion, until you can get some independent evidence of reversion in such cases.—

I hope that your interest in Natural History may continue, & that you may be successful in any researches which you may make—2

I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

1
Sinel’s letter to CD has not been found. In a later popular book, Sinel recalled his correspondence with Darwin: When I was a young man I once wrote to him, so as to have his opinion on what I thought was a discovery I had made with regard to the presence of dark-coloured feathers in the plumage of pure bred white fan-tail pigeons, and the analogy of these with pigmented spots or ‘moles’ on the human skin (a matter too deep to enter into here). His reply to my letter is in front of me as I am writing (it is framed between two glasses, so that the whole of it can be read). That letter is full of encouragement, appreciation, and good wishes, and I often say that neither a Rockefeller nor a Vanderbilt could raise money enough to purchase it. (Sinel [1900], 2: 146.)
2
Sinel co-authored the section on zoology in The Channel Islands (Ansted and Latham [1893]), and wrote An outline of the natural history of our shores (Sinel 1906).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added
1.3 effect] above del ‘result’
1.3 of the skin,] interl
1.4 moles] above del ‘they’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13250,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13250