To Hermanus Hartogh Heijs van Zouteveen   21 February 1871

Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.

Feb 21 1871

Dear Sir

I am greatly obliged for the copy from the Révue & for your interesting remarks. If M. Reclus is trustworthy the case is extremely curious, & I think it wd be worth while to enquire in Paris whether he is to be trusted.1 I have also received your Dutch memoir with the wonderful drawings of elephant’s heads. May this not be a record of an extinct animal like the drawing of the Mastodon said to have been found in France?2 The argument in the voyage of the Novara & elsewhere, led me to the conclusion of the independent civilisation of Peru &c.3

I have already despatched to you the erroneous sheet,4 & I enclose answers to your queries. I wish I knew where the word, Larynx was. I think I follow Häckel in his use of the word Phylum.5 Pray correct in Ch. 6 the word kingdom into sub-kingdom. In vol 1. p 321 I would add, after “classes”, or “sub kingdoms”   I am very much obliged for these suggestions.6

I hope soon to send a few more sheets reprinted with slight corrections.

Believe me | dear Sir | yours very faithfully | Ch. Darwin

P.S. I much wish I cd read Dutch; for yr memoir judging from the wood-cuts must be very interesting.—

LS(A)

1
See letter from Hermanus Hartogh Heijs van Zouteveen, [before 21 February 1871]. CD refers to the quotation from an article by Elisée Reclus in Revue des deux mondes (Reclus 1859–60).
2
CD’s copy of Hartogh Heijs van Zouteveen’s article, ‘De voorhistorische mensch in Amerika’ (Hartogh Heijs van Zouteveen 1870b) is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL; it is not annotated. It includes drawings of elephant-head sculptures or hieroglyphs.
3
CD refers to Friedrich Müller 1868; there is an annotated copy in the Darwin Library–CUL (Marginalia 1: 608–9). On p. 127, CD wrote: ‘He discusses & disputes whether the civilisation of W. coast of S. America is due to immigration from Asia— I wd remark if so, the aborigines must have already been somewhat advanced, for while not nec with our inference, it is very unlikely that a few shipwrecked men from some less civilised nation cd have produced any permanent effect on savages.—’
5
See letter from Hermanus Hartogh Heijs van Zouteveen, [before 21 February 1871]. Ernst Haeckel, in his book Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (Haeckel 1866, 1: 29), coined the term ‘phylon’ to describe a group or tribe of organisms descended from a common form. The term was later given a Latin rather than a Greek ending and became ‘phylum’. For Haeckel’s use of the term phylum or phylon, see Valentine 2004, p. 8.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

4.0 into sub-kingdom] interl in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7500,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7500