To W. B. Tegetmeier   20 April [1867]

The letter to which this is a reply has not been found; the pamphlet has not been identified.

CD refers to the revised page-proofs of the fourth edition of Origin, which was published in 1866. By the ‘crossed bird about which I blundered’, CD may refer to a passage in the first edition that was altered in the third and later editions. The original passage read (Origin, p. 25): I crossed some uniformly white fantails with some uniformly black barbs, and they produced mottled brown and black birds; these I again crossed together, and one grandchild of the pure white fantail and pure black barb was of as beautiful a blue colour, with the white rump, double black wing-bar, and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon! In the third edition (Origin, p. 26), it read: I crossed some white fantails, which breed very true, with some black barbs … ; and the mongrels were black, brown, and mottled. I also crossed a barb with a spot, which is a white bird with a red tail and red spot on the forehead, and which notoriously breeds very true; the mongrels were dusky and mottled. I then crossed one of the mongrel barb-fantails with a mongrel barb-spot, and they produced a bird of as beautiful a blue colour, with the white croup, double black wing-bar, and barred and white-edged tail-feathers, as any wild rock-pigeon! See also Peckham ed. 1959, p. 100.