Ɛpsilon

From W. C. Tait   29 September 1869

Oporto

Sept 29th 1869.

Charles Darwin Esqr. | Beckenham

Dear Sir,

I duly received your letter of the 27th. ultmo. and am very glad to hear such good news of the plants—1

The Portuguese flora is I believe rather interesting as I believe there are many endemic plants of curious habits— Mr. Goetze2 mentioned to me a very curious parasitical fungus which grows on the roots of a cistus   I have seen it growing in abundance near a village called Oliveira d’Azemeis3 and it is eaten by the country people—

I have not seen or heard of one single species of bird confined to this country or even to the peninsula but was much astonished a short time ago to see barred plumage on a young specimen of a Lestris (Lestris Richardsonii I believe) so much resembling that of the Sparrowhawk.4 The connexion between the predatory habits of the two birds and the similar plumage is naturally striking the more so as they are classified so widely apart.

With regard to the Lizard there are several links between the Seps chalcides and the blindworm5   One little known is the Sepsina angolense and in Cuviers Animal Kingdom there is a plate containing the figure of a reptile with 2 flaps on its sides and which from my remembrance of it seemed to represent the disappearing hind legs—6

The law of the correlation of growth may perhaps be in a measure connected with the law of the tendency to the equal diffusion of force from its centre regulated by the medium through which it travels—7

These subjects interest me very much but of course to a business man the time for study is very short and subordinate and any systematic investigations must necessarily go on very slowly—

Perhaps you may not know that if the spurs of a cock are cut off and inserted into the head of the bird they grow and look like horns— The Portuguese sometimes do this while the birds are young— The first specimen which I saw puzzled me very much—

Believe me to remain | Dear Sir, | Yours very truly, | William C. Tait.

1
See letter to W. C. Tait, 27 August [1869]. Tait had sent plants of Drosophyllum lusitanicum from Portugal.
3
Oliveira de Azeméis is in the district of Aveiro, in northern Portugal.
4
Lestris richardsonii is now Stercorarius parasiticus (family Stercorariidae), the arctic skua or parasitic jaeger. Juvenile birds show varying degrees of barring in their plumage. Accipiter nisus is the Eurasian sparrowhawk; the under-parts are barred at all ages.
5
Seps chalcides is now Chalcides chalcides, the Italian three-toed skink. The slowworm or blindworm is Anguis fragilis.
6
Tait may refer to a species now known as Afrotyphlops angolensis,the Angola blind snake, which superficially resembles a blindworm. Tait also refers to Georges Cuvier and Le règne animal (Cuvier 1817), which was translated into English as The animal kingdom in several different English editions, some of which had additions to the text and illustrations. Tait probably refers to the illustration of Bipes lepidopodus (now Pygopus lepidopodus, the common scaly foot), a snake-like lizard from Australia that lacks forelimbs and has flap-like hind limbs (see Cuvier 1834–6, 2: pl. 26 bis).
7
CD had discussed correlation of growth, including correlated variation, or the tendency, when one part of an organism is modified through continued selection, of other parts to be unavoidably modified, in Origin and Variation. See especially Variation 2: 319–21.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6919,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6919