Ɛpsilon

To William Watson   17 April 1882

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

April. 17th 1882

Dear Sir

You have misunderstood my meaning but the mistake was a very natural one & your criticism good.—1 I ought not to have interpolated the sentence about the burying of food; & if inserted at all, it ought to have been at end of paragraph, or in a separate one.— The case was mentioned solely to illustrate a long-continued habit, for as far as I have seen well-fed domestic dogs do not revisit their buried treasures. A dog when burying food makes a hole (as far as I have seen) with his front legs alone, & shovels in the earth with his nose; so that there is no resemblance to the supposed excrement-covering movements.—2

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

I see that I have omitted to thank you for your very courteous expressions towards me.—

1
Watson’s letter has not been found. Watson published CD’s reply in the Academy, 10 June 1882, p. 417, because it was one of the last things CD wrote.
2
Watson had suggested that CD had arrived at a ‘false conclusion’ in Expression, p. 44, when he implied that ‘the familiar canine practice of throwing up earth by backwards ejaculations of the hind-feet’ was ‘a “purposeless remnant” of a habit, on the part of the dog’s wilder progenitors, of “burying superfluous food”’ (Academy, 10 June 1882, p. 417).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

0.1 (Railway … S.E.R.)] parentheses added

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13769,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13769