Ɛpsilon

To W. H. Flower   11 July [1863]1

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

July 11th

My dear Sir

I am truly obliged for all the trouble which you have taken for me & for your very interesting note.—2 I had only vaguely heard it said that Frogs had a rudiment of a sixth toe; had I known that such great men had looked to the point, I should not have dreamed of looking myself.3 The rudiment sent to you was from a full-grown frog; so that if these bones are the two Cuneiforms they must, I shd. think, be considered to be in a rudimentary condition.— This afternoon my gardener4 brought me some tadpoles, with the hind-legs alone developed, & I looked at the rudiment. At this age it certainly looks extremely like a digit, for the extremity is enlarged like that of the adjoining real toe, & the transverse articulation seems similar— I am sorry that the case is doubtful, for if these Batrachians had six toes, I certainly think it would have thrown light on the truly extraordinary strength of inheritance in Polydactylism in so many animals, & especially on the power of regrowth in amputated supernumery digits.5

With very sincere thanks | believe me | My dear Sir | Yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to T. H. Huxley, 3 July [1863].
2
The letter from Flower has not been found, but see n. 3, below.
3
Having learned that Peter Mark Roget had stated that frogs have the rudiment of a sixth toe (Roget 1834, 1: 544), and having heard other such reports, CD had dissected a specimen, asking Thomas Henry Huxley to give his opinion of the dissection (see letters to T. H. Huxley, 16 February [1863] and 27 June [1863]). Huxley declined, but offered to ask Flower to answer CD’s questions (see letter from T. H. Huxley, 2 July 1863, and letter to T. H. Huxley, 3 July [1863]). The ‘great men’ referred to in Flower’s letter have not been identified; however, see Variation 2: 12–17.
5
CD referred briefly to the possible occurrence in frogs of a rudimentary sixth toe, in his extensive discussion of polydactylism and inheritance in Variation 2: 12–17 (on p. 14).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.11 have] interl
1.13 supernumery] after del ‘add’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4559,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4559