My dear Mr Trimen
It is very kind of you to take the trouble of making so long an extract, which I am very glad to possess, as the case is certainly a very striking one.2 Blanchard’s argument about the males not smelling the females, because we can perceive no odour, seems to me curiously weak.3 It is wonderful that he shd not have remembered at what great distances Deer & many other animals can scent the cleanest man.—
Many thanks for your Photograph, & I send mine, but it is a hideous affair—merely a modified, hardly an improved, Gorilla.—4
Mr Doubleday has suggested a capital scheme for estimating the number of sexes in Lepidoptera, viz by a German List, in which in many cases the sexes are differently priced.5 With Butterflies, out of a list of about 300 Sp. & Vars. 114 have sexes of different prices, & in all of these, with one single exception, the male is the cheapest. On an average judging from price for every 100 females of each species there ought to be 143 males of the same species.— So I firmly believe that you field collectors are correct.— Nearly the same result with moths.
I sincerely wish you health, happiness & success in Nat. History in S. Africa.6 I should have much liked to have asked you, if you could have spared time, to come down here for a day or two; but Mrs. Huxley is coming here in a few days with all her six children & nurses, for health sake, & stays some weeks. And our House will be, with others, so absolutely full, that today we have had to tell our Brother-in-law, that we cannot possibly receive him.—7
Most truly do I thank you for your great kindness in aiding me in so many ways.8 Yesterday I was working in much of your information.—
Believe me | Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin
Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6117,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on