Ɛpsilon

To A. R. Wallace   13 January [1873]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan 13th

My dear Wallace

I have read your Review with much interest, & I thank you sincerely for the very kind spirit in which it is written.2 I cannot say that I am convinced by your criticisms. If you have ever actually observed a kitten sucking & pounding, with extended toes, its mother, & then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the same thing on a soft shawl, & ultimately an old cat (as I have seen) & do not admit that it is identically the same action, I am astonished.3

With respect to the decapitated frog, I have always heard of Pflüger as a most trustworthy observer. If indeed anyone knows a frog’s habits so well as to say that it never rubs off a bit of leaf or other object, which may stick to it though, in the same manner as it did the acid, your objection wd. be valid.4 Some of Flouren’s experiments, in which he removed the cerebral anterior hemispheres from a pigeon, indicate that acts, apparently performed consciously, can be done without consciousness,—I presume through the force of habit, in which case it would appear that intellectual power is not brought into play.—5

Several persons have made suggestion & objection as yours about the hands being held up in astonishment: if there was any straining of the muscles, as with protruded arms under fright, I would agree: as it is I must keep to my old opinion, & I daresay you will say that I am an obstinate old blockhead.6

My dear Wallace | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

The Book has sold wonderfully; 9000 copies have now been printed.7

1
The year is established by the reference to Wallace’s review of Expression; the review was published in January 1873.
2
Wallace’s review of Expression was published in the Quarterly Journal of Science (A. R. Wallace 1873).
3
See A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116, and Expression, pp. 46–7.
4
Wallace had doubted CD’s account of a decapitated frog attempting to wipe a drop of acid off its thigh, first with the foot of the same leg, then, when this foot was amputated, with the foot of the other leg. He suggested that the experiment was not correctly recorded, or that if it were, the action could not be reflex since it was one the frog had never needed to use in life, when it had both feet (A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116, Expression, pp. 35–6). Wallace’s objection was recorded in Expression 2d ed., p. 37 n. 10. The experiment was carried out by Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (see, for example, Pflüger 1853, pp. 16–17).
5
For Marie Jean Pierre Flourens’s experiments on the cerebral localisation, see DSB; for his experiments on pigeons, see Flourens 1824, pp. 29–32.
6
Wallace suggested that the opening of the arms in the expression of astonishment was connected with an impulse to protect or defend, and was not merely the antithesis of an expression of indifference (A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116; Expression, pp. 287–8).
7
See Correspondence vol. 20, letter from R. F. Cooke, 6 December 1872.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.3 actually] interl
1.3 extended] after del ‘pr’
1.4 its mother,] interl
2.2 never] above del ‘never’
2.6 acts,] interl
3.4 that I am] above del ‘he is’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8735,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8735