Ɛpsilon

From William Pollard Pattison   4 December 1865

28 Guildford St: | Russell Sq:, London.1

4th. Dec: 1865.

Dear Sir,

I am about to take a liberty which I would not venture to do but for the kind way in which scientific men allow what might be their exclusive wealth to be drawn upon by all earnest enquirers. I must frankly say, however, that the object of my present enquiry is a practical one rather than the obtaining of knowledge for itself. But being on a point which not more than 4 or 5 can give any information & yourself the most valuable I have no option but to ask your kind permission to submit it to you.

In the course of my profession as an Actuary I have the following case:

The succession of certain people to a considerable property depends, with other contingencies, on issue being born to a gentleman of pure race (aged 35) to a lady (aged 35) who is a hybred—the offspring of an Englishman and an Indian lady. They have been married 21 years without issue & there have been, I believe, no indications of a power of fecundity. If the circumstances applied to two Europeans, not blood relations, a fair estimate might be formed of the probability of issue; and what I wish to ascertain is whether the failure of issue is functional & therefore impossible, or whether otherwise it is more or less probable than if both were Europeans.

Though I would highly prize your opinion, I will only ask you to name the books (kindly indicating in what parts) I should find any trustworthy information, or valuable opinion.2 I do not ask for your opinion, only because you might not wish to give it & yet at the same time would not wish to decline giving it.

I am sometimes in the neighbourhood of Down, and was half tempted to call rather than write this long letter: but a letter can be answered in the leisure hour of the day, and my call might have been in the most busy one.

Believe me, Dear Sir, | Yours faithfully & obediently | W. P. Pattison.

Charles Darwin, Esqre | Down.

1
Pattison apparently wrote ‘Guildford’ in error for ‘Guilford’ (Post Office London directory).
2
CD had discussed hybrid sterility in Origin, pp. 245–72, and continued extensive research on the subject following its publication (see Correspondence vol. 10, Appendix VI). Although his own experiments focused on plants, CD also collected information on animals, and was interested in analogous cases in humans. In a letter to W. B. Tegetmeier, 27 [December 1862] (Correspondence vol. 10), CD inquired about ‘individual fowls or pigeons which are sterile together’, adding that this was a ‘parallel case to those recorded of a man not impotent long living with a woman who remained childless; the husband died & the woman married again & had plenty of children’. CD suggested that in such cases the man and woman were ‘dissimilar in their sexual organisation’. See also Correspondence vol. 12, letter to T. C. Eyton, 29 December [1864?]. In the course of his botanical research, CD debated whether the sterility of species when crossed was a specially selected quality, or was incidental upon other acquired differences (see letter to M. E. Wichura, 3 February [1865] and nn. 8 and 9). In Descent 1: 220–3, CD briefly considered the subject with respect to human races, drawing comparisons with the intercrossing of varieties and species in plants and animals. CD stated that the evidence for hybrid sterility in humans was inconclusive; he also noted that fertility was easily affected by changed conditions of life and close interbreeding, which were themselves governed by ‘highly complex laws’. The subject of hybrid sterility in humans was of particular interest in debates about the unity of the human species and the origin of the human races. For a contemporary discussion of the topic, see Farrar 1864c. See also letter from F. W. Farrar, 6 November 1865 and n. 5.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4946,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4946