To P. L. Sclater   4 May [1861]

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

May 4th

Dear Sclater

Immediately on the receipt of your note & kind offer of inserting in the Ibis a note about the habitats of the Falkland Birds,1 I got out my catalogues & notes made on the spot.2 But I am sorry to say that I can make nothing out definitely, for I always refer to numbers not knowing at the time the names of the Birds; so that if any specimens got wrongly named, it would only be possible to set matters right by looking to my original specimens.3

Accordingly I wrote to Mr Gray & to Gould to know if they had any of my specimens (which most unfortunately were given to Zoolog. Soc & afterwards all distributed), but they have not.—4 Therefore I look at the case as hopeless. I cannot conceive how such a mistake could have occurred; but without fresh & distinct evidence, I do not see that I could do any good publishing a note. A false habitat is a positive mischief, worse than a species not appearing in a list; & therefore I shd. say after Capt. Abbotts careful work, it would be better for the two names to be considered as errors, than to be given without positive evidence.—5

I am sorry to have caused you this trouble, & am myself vexed that I cannot either prove myself right or confess to a great & heavy blunder.

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

P.S. | I had a letter the other day from Mr Swinhoe, & he tells me that he has sent you a new rock-pigeon & (as I understand) the wild Anser cygnoides;6 but when next in London I must call on you & enquire about these two Birds,—which surprise me.— Perhaps the Pigeon may be the Himalayan Rock-pigeon.—

Endorsement: ‘May 1861’

1
Sclater’s note has not been found, but see the letter to P. L. Sclater, 21 [April 1861]. Sclater was the editor of the Ibis, a magazine of general ornithology, published by the British Ornithologists’ Union.
2
CD’s catalogue of numbered ornithological specimens collected on the Beagle voyage is in DAR 29.2. A transcript of the catalogue, including annotations, was published by Nora Barlow (Barlow ed. 1963).
3
The numbers in the catalogue (see n. 2, above) correspond to CD’s specimens, which are recorded and described in the Beagle zoological diaries (DAR 30 and 31).
4
George Robert Gray and John Gould both contributed species descriptions for Birds. CD presented the Beagle collection of mammals and birds to the Zoological Society of London in January 1837. After the society’s museum was closed and its collections dispersed in 1855, most of the birds went to the British Museum, but some of CD’s specimens were either destroyed or lost. See Porter 1985, pp. 1002–4.
5
See letter to P. L. Sclater, 21 [April 1861]. Charles Compton Abbott, in his account of the birds of the Falkland Islands, stated of Cinclodes antarcticus (Garn.) (Abbott 1861, p. 154): I do not believe that there is any second species of this genus found in East Falkland, although Mr. Darwin states that Cinclodes patachonicus is “common” there. Nor have I ever seen or heard of any such bird as the Scytalopus magellanicus, also mentioned by Mr. Darwin. Cinclodes patachonicus is a misspelling of Cinclodes patagonicus. Scytalopus magellanicus is the Andean tapaculo, a small, wren-like bird that inhabits the forest undergrowth and rarely flies.
6
Robert Swinhoe, British consulate in Amoy, China, sent CD specimens of domesticated pigeons from China (see Correspondence vol. 5, CD memorandum, [December 1855], and Variation 1: 132 n. 1, 186). CD had sent Swinhoe a copy of the first edition of Origin (see Correspondence vol. 8, Appendix III). Swinhoe included Columba leucozonura (a synonym of C. rupestris subsp. rupestris, the hill pigeon) and Anser cygnoides (the swan goose) in the lists of birds he had collected in North China (Swinhoe 1861a, pp. 259–60, and 1861b, p. 344, respectively).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.4 names] altered from ‘name’
1.5 it] after del ‘my’
2.2 (which] parenthesis over comma
5.3 these] ‘se’ over ‘m’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3138,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3138