Ɛpsilon

To R. H. Meade   23 January [1860?]1

Down Bromley Kent

Jan. 23rd

Dear Sir

I hope that you will excuse the liberty I take in writing to you, & requesting a favour. In the Annals of Nat Hist, vol. 15, p. 396 you remark “The variations of forms in the maxillæ are of no value amongst the Phalangidæ, in affording generic or specific characters, as with the true spiders.—”2 Am I to understand from the latter part of sentence that with the individuals of the same undoubted species the maxillæ vary in form? Is not this a very surprising fact? Would you have the great kindness, if the fact be so, to give me some details on the amount & kind of variation, & in what species. And further would you permit me to quote any such facts on your authority?3

With many apologies for troubling you, I beg to remain | Dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Charles Darwin.

[14 of a page excised]

Incomplete

1
This letter was previously published in Correspondence vol. 8 from a printed copy in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London ser. B (1922): xii. In the Proceedings, the recipient was incorrectly identified as Louis Compton Miall. The author of the paper to which CD refers, however, was the entomologist Richard Henry Meade (Miall would have been 12 when it was published). The Proceedings published the letter with a clear date of ‘January 23, 1860’, but the year is not in CD’s hand; it may be an endorsement or an archivist’s note.
2
Meade 1855, p. 396. The Phalangiidae are a family of harvestmen (order Opiliones) in the class Arachnida (spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, etc).
3
There is no record of a reply from Meade or of any further use of his paper by CD.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-2664A,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-2664A