From Julius Victor Carus   18 January 1867

My dear Sir,

I received your letter of Dec. 26 and altered the place accordingly.1

To-day I beg to bring three questions before you. P. 101 of the original you mention the rock-thrush of Guiana. Bronn had translated “Rupicola aurantia”.2 Thrush is Turdus; I find a “cock” of the rock indicated which would be for aught I know the Rupicola. Our European rock-thrush is Turdus saxatilis.3 Is the species to which you allude a nearly allied form? At any rate is it a Turdus or a Rupicola?

P. 171. (at the bottom) you speak of the tortoise-shell-colour of cats.4 Is this a motley fur with white, yellow and black? or else what colour?

P. 366. Mentioning the way by which the wings of the Pinguins might have been modified you give as an instance of a somewhat intermediate form the “logger-headed duck”. Bronn left out the apposition and gives only “.... Ente”, i.e. duck. I find in Linnaeus Syst. nat. ed. XIII. Anas cinerea, and here the vulgar name “logger-headed goose, Latham, syn. III. 2. p. 429.”5 Is that the species you mean? He gives the Falkland isles as habitat, so it may be. Could you give me the present name? I prefer giving the systematic term instead of the vulgar scarcely known with us and thereby leading to misapprehension.

Believe me | My dear Sir | Ever yours sincerely | J. Victor Carus

Leipzig, Jan. 18. | 1867

1
The letter has not been found. Carus and CD had been corresponding about Carus’s revised translation of Origin based on the fourth English edition (Bronn and Carus 1867; see Correspondence vol. 14). Two earlier German editions had been translated by Heinrich Georg Bronn (Bronn trans. 1860 and Bronn trans. 1863).
2
See Bronn trans. 1863, p. 102. Bronn used the common name Felshahn and gave only the genus, Rupicola. Rupicola aurantia is now R. rupicola, the common name being Guianan cock-of-the-rock or, in German, Orange Felsenhahn or Klippenvogel.
3
Turdus saxatilis is now Monticola saxatilis, the common name being rock thrush or, in German, Steinrötel.
4
In Origin 3d ed., p. 162, CD had written, ‘What can be more singular than the relation between blue eyes and deafness in cats, and the tortoise-shell colour with the female sex.’ (The sentence was slightly modified in Origin 4th ed., p. 171.) Bronn had translated the phrase, ‘and the tortoise-shell colour with the female sex’ as ‘oder die der Farbe des Panzers mit dem weiblichen Geschlechte der Schildkröten’ (literally ‘or the colour of the shell with the female sex in turtles’), having misunderstood the original (see Bronn trans. 1863, p. 171).
5
See Bronn trans. 1863, p. 333. Carus refers to Carl von Linné, John Latham, and Linnaeus 1788–93.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5370,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5370