Ɛpsilon

To A. W. Bennett   29 February [1872]1

9. Devonshire St. | Portland Place

Feb. 29th

My dear Sir

I have no address book with me, & so am obliged to send this note to care of Mr. Macmillan.—2 It is to ask you to be so kind as to send on Post-card a reference to Prof. Shaler’s paper.—3 He sent me last autumn some account of his observations on Rattle-snakes, but his view did not then, & does not yet, seem to me probable.—4

I thank you sincerely for your generous review of the last. Edit. of the Origin,—more especially as we differ so greatly & I quite agree with you that the only way to arrive at the truth is to discuss & freely express all differences of opinion5

My dear Sir | yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

1
The year is established by the address. CD stayed at 9 Devonshire Street from 16 February until 21 March 1872 (CD’s Journal (Appendix II)).
2
Bennett was the biological subeditor of Nature; Alexander Macmillan was its publisher (ODNB).
3
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler’s article ‘The rattlesnake and natural selection’ appeared in the January 1872 issue of American Naturalist (Shaler 1872).
4
Shaler’s view was communicated to CD by Henry Bowman Brady, who had met Shaler in Boston (see Correspondence vol. 19, letter from H. B. Brady, 18 October 1871). Shaler argued that rattlesnakes mimicked the sound of cicadas, thereby attracting birds within striking range (Shaler 1872, p. 34). Bennett had referred to Shaler 1872 in his review of Origin 6th ed. (see n. 5, below).
5
Bennett’s review of Origin 6th ed. appeared in Nature, 22 February 1872, pp. 318–19. Although Bennett disagreed with CD on several points, he praised CD for not concealing points on which he had changed his mind (p. 318), and as ‘having contributed a larger share’ than any other naturalist to solving the problem of the production of new species (p. 319).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8227,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8227