To Albany Hancock   30 March [1853]

Down Farnborough Kent

March 30th—

My dear Sir

I am much obliged for your note received this morning, with as full answers as you could send to my queries, & for a former note received some time since with excellent remarks on the classification of Alcippe.1 I have been very troublesome, but shall cause no more; & am truly obliged for all you have for me. If in your power, I am sure you will kindly in course of summer get me a few specimens for the British Museum & for distribution.—

I yet have a few specimens of other cirripedes of yours, in my possession.—

I have now finally finished with my S. American boring cirripede; & this has utterly confounded my previous confusion how to rank Alcippe & it; for they present some most remarkable similarity, for instance they are both bisexual, with the males remarkably alike.—& yet in what I must consider their fundamental organisation, & in their metamorphosis, they are so totally unlike that I cannot place them in the same order!2

My classification does not satisfy myself, nor, I fear, you if you ever look to my volume on this point.

Pray believe me | My dear Sir | Yours truly obliged | Ch. Darwin

The bosses on the cirri of Alcippe are hardish or crustaceous, they are all four opposed to each other & the little ridges on them are crenated; these facts made me suspect that their use was not for simple prehension, but for triturating the food;3 & now I find in my analogous S. American burrower, & in no other cirripede that the œsophagus is provided with the most beautiful discs set with teeth, & brushes of hairs, worked by muscles, certainly for triturating food; which strengthens my notion.—4

2
For the South American boring cirripede, Cryptophialus minutus, CD felt compelled to create a new order, Abdominalia (Living Cirripedia (1854): 563–6). Alcippe lampas was classified as a genus of the Lepadidae. See letter to Albany Hancock, 10 February [1853], n. 3. In modern classifications of the Cirripedia, Alcippe (Trypetesa lampas) and Cryptophialus are placed in the same order, Acrothoracica, but in separate sub-orders through having an incomplete or complete gut, respectively.
3
See Living Cirripedia (1854): 543–4. The ‘bosses’ are there called ‘protruberant buttons or cushions’.
4
Living Cirripedia (1854): 577–8.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

2.1 of other cirripedes] interl
3.1 cirripede] altered from ‘cirripedes’
3.3 for instance] after del ‘& yet’
6.1 of Alcippe] interl
6.1 or] over illeg
6.1 they are all four opposed to each other 6.2] interl
6.3 simple] interl
6.4 & in no other cirripede] interl
6.5 discs] interl
6.5 set with] ‘with’ over ‘of’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1509,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1509