From James Shaw   17 February 1868

Dear Sir,

Modern thought drifting to new lands bursts out in mutiny betimes like Columbus’s sailors.¹ Still I scarcely expected the Athenæum to be so infallible this week.

“The reduction of the numbers of so-called Species is the daily business of Zoologists” &c   Then why does it know that “man never originated a species” when it confesses that species are not determined?

It seems you don’t acknowledge “an inherent tendency not to vary” & yet you are a storehouse “on the transmission of peculiarities once acquired through successive generations”.² Well that seems scarcely “fair fighting” on the critics’ part.

You have your battles & we in this outlandish quarter have our skirmishes. Our antiquarian Soc. was quite hot here one night because I had taken up the Subject of the Right Hand as a specialization of an organ still going on, although it might have commenced thousands on thousands of years ago.³ I had a list of tools made to suit the right hand only— a list of customs requiring the special use of the right hand, as writing. &c &c

Then I had the case of rude people as drivers having far less difference between the value or amount of differentiation of the hands than engravers, &c

I had the ratio of left handed folk given in the book of Judges of the tribe of Benjamin being greater than the ratio now⁴ & the ratio of elephants left-tusked as we might say greater than that of left-handed men. Then I had the puzzle of left-handedness not well explained by non-symmetrically of lungs &c.⁵

One gentleman said it was rank Darwinism disguised & therefore I suppose he would know its value.

I am | Dear Sir | Yours most respectfully | Ja^s. Shaw.

P.S. | I was trying to break a lance on the oft repeated dogma that an impassable gulf exists bet. man & other beings because man alone has mental progress. This was brought up against poor Page.⁶ I was surprised that the Athenaeum Dec 21 admitted my terrible statement.⁷

That the advent of a being like man who is protecting angel or most cunning adversary of beasts should modify their instincts so that cunning &c competes best with cunning—intelligence best serves intelligence—seems fair enough reasoning.⁸ True, parrots & gorillas &c rank high for brain and don’t seem either to serve or fight man, but we don’t know the antecedents of their ancestors. Peru & Mexico had once an immense population to whom parrots feathers were luxuries.⁹

Excuse me | J. S.