To W. D. Fox   14 June [1856]

Down Bromley Kent

June 14th

My dear Fox

Very many thanks for the capital information on Cats;1 I see I had blundered greatly, but I know I have somewhere your original notes; but my notes are so numerous during 19 years collection that it wd. take me at least a year to go over & classify them.—2 I do not intend to attend systematically to cats, there are such great doubts on origin & they have been crossed in so many countries with native Cats.—

I have bespoken the so-called Himmalaya Rabbit in Zoolog. Gardens.3

I am particularly obliged about Call Drake.4 Have you ever crossed them with common Ducks: it would be a very valuable experiment for me to know whether the half-bred are fertile inter se, or with some third breed; I am trying this extensively with Pigeons; but I am overwhelmed with subjects & work, & do so wish I was stronger.—

What you say about my Essay, I daresay is very true; & it gave me another fit of the wibber-gibbers; I hope that I shall succeed in making it modest. One great motive is to get information on the many points on which I want it. But I tremble about it, which I shd. not do, if I allowed some 3 or 4 more years to elapse before publishing anything.

My dear old friend | Yours affecty | C. Darwin

I am off in 10 minutes to a great Pigeon Fancier at Black Heath.—5

1
See letter to W. D. Fox, 8 [June 1856]. CD cited Fox on cats in Variation 2: 329.
2
‘I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum.’ (Autobiography, p. 137).
3
The gardens of the Zoological Society of London. CD had been a member of the society since 1839. CD was collecting skeletons of wild and domestic rabbits to enable him to make osteological comparisons (see Variation 1: 115–30). He cited information given to him by Fox about Himalayan rabbits in Variation 1: 109. See also letter to John Thompson?, 26 November [1856].
5
CD’s Address book (Down House MS) gives Matthew Wicking’s address as ‘Clifton Villa, Blackheath Park’.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-1901,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-1901