To W. B. Tegetmeier   26 [January 1863]1

Down Bromley Kent

26th

My dear Sir

I have got the vaguest idea that I have read of a cut-off extra or monstrous toe on a fowl growing again.----2 Have you heard of such a case? If you have, kindly inform me; if not, please do not write, as I shall understand silence

My dear Sir | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin

Shall you do anything about Spanish Cock & white Silk-Hen?3

I saw in Report of Philoperisteron a notice of curious pigeon with long wings.----4 Do you know owner, could you get me a longer description, with any measurement of wing from tip to tip & measurement of body from base of beak to base of tail. But it would hardly worth trouble without the Bird was dead.----

Copy

1
The date is established by the reference to the report of the Philoperisteron Society’s annual show (see n. 4, below).
2
For CD’s interest in polydactylism, see, for instance, the letter to T. H. Huxley, [8 February 1863] and nn. 2 and 3.
3
In his letter to Tegetmeier of 27 [December 1862] (\Correspondence\ vol. 10), CD offered £5 to ‘cover expences of experiment"; CD encouraged Tegetmeier to cross a "Spanish Cock & a couple of white Silk hens’, adding that he would be ‘most grateful to hear whether the offspring breed well’. See also letter to W. B. Tegetmeier, 19 February [1863] and n. 2.
4
CD refers to the report in the Journal of Horticulture, 20 January 1863, pp. 58--9, of the Philoperisteron Society’s annual show, held at the Freemason’s Hall, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, on 15 January 1863. The report provided details of a Belgian pigeon combining the colour of the archangel variety with the head of the owl or barb pigeon; its most ‘striking pecularity’ was ‘the extraordinary length of the tail and flight feathers, the latter crossed beyond the tail giving the animal the appearance of a gigantic Swift (Cypselus), or Longwinged Hawk’.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.1 white] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3944,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3944