WCP5298

Letter (WCP5298.5842)

[[1]]

Miss Wedgwood[']s

Hartfield

Tunbridge Wells1

13th. July 1858.2

My dear Hooker

Your letter to Wallace3 seems to me perfect, quite clear & most courteous. I do not think it could possibly be improved & I have today forwarded it with a letter of my own.4 —

I always thought it very possible that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had grand enough soul not to care; but I [2] found myself mistaken & punished; I had, however, quite resigned myself & had written half a letter to Wallace to give up all priority to him & sh[ould]d. certainly not have changed had it not been for Lyell's5 & yours quite extraordinary kindness. I assure you I feel it, & shall not forget it.

I am much more than satisfied at what took place at Linnean. Soc[iet]y6 — I had thought [3] that your letter7 & mine to Asa Gray8 were to be only an appendix to Wallace's paper.9 — We go from here in few days to sea-side, probably Isle of Wight & on my return (after a battle with Pigeon skeletons) I will set to work at abstract,10 though how on earth I shall make anything of an abstract in 30 pages of Journal I know not, but will try my best.

I shall order Bentham:11 is it [4] not a pity that you sh[oul]d. waste time in tabulating var[ietie]s; for I can get the Down schoolmaster12 to do it on my return & can tell you all results.

I must try & see you before your journey; but do not think that I am fishing to ask you come to Down., for you will have no time for that.

You cannot imagine how pleased I am that the [5] notion of Natural Selection has acted as a purgative on your bowels of immutability. Whenever naturalists can look at species changing as certain, what a magnificent field will be open, — on all the laws of variation, — on the genealogy of all living beings, — on their lines of migration &c &c.

Pray thank Mrs. Hooker13 for her very kind little note, [6] & pray say how truly obliged I am, & in truth ashamed to think, that she sh[oul]d. have had the trouble of copying my ugly M.S.14 It was extraordinaryly [sic] kind in her. —

Farewell my dear kind friend —

Yours affect[ionate]ly | C. Darwin [signature]

I have had some fun here in watching a [7] slave-making ant, for I could not help rather doubting the wonderful stories, but I have now seen a defeated marauding party, & I have seen a migration from one nest to another of the slave-makers, carrying their slaves (who are house & not field niggers) in their mouths!15

I am inclined to think that it is a true generalisation that when honey is secreted at one point of circle of corolla, if the pistil bends it always bends into line of gangway to the honey. — the Larkspur is good instance in contrast to Columbine. — if you think of it, just attend to this little point.16 —

1
Wedgwood, Sarah Elizabeth (1793-1880). Sister of Emma Darwin. Darwin and Emma had joined their children at Sarah's home in Tunbridge Wells, a resort town in Kent to the southeast of London, on 9 July 1858 (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 130, n. 1]).
2
The month and year appear to be in different writing and were probably added later.
3
This letter (WCP4825) is presumed lost and the text is not known. However, ARW must have received it, as he wrote to his mother in a 6 October 1858 letter (WCP369): ʺI have received letters from Mr. Darwin and Dr. Hooker, two of the most eminent naturalists in England, which have highly gratified me. I sent Mr. Darwin an essay on a subject upon which he is now writing a great work. He showed it to Dr. Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell, who thought so highly of it that they had it read before the Linnean Society. This insures me the acquaintance of these eminent men on my return homeʺ.
4
This letter (WCP4824) is presumed lost and the text is not known, but is also mentioned in the letter from ARW to his mother quoted from in n. 3, as well as in ARW's letter to Hooker of 6 October 1858 (WCP1454).
5
Lyell, Charles (1797-1875). British lawyer and geologist.
6
ARW's essay he sent to Darwin (see n. 9) was read together with an 1844 essay of Darwin's, an enclosure from a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray (see n. 8), and Hooker and Lyell's letter to the Linnean Society (see n. 7), at a meeting of the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858, and published later that year as: Darwin, C., and Wallace, A. R. 1858. On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology, 3: 45-62.
7
The letter from Hooker and Lyell to the Linnean Society communicating ARW's essay and Darwin's essay and letter enclosure is published in: Darwin, C., and Wallace, A. R. 1858. On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology, 3: 45-62; and Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [pp. 122-124]).
8
Gray, Asa (1810-1888). American botanist. In his letter to Gray of 5 September [1857], Darwin enclosed a description of his views on natural selection (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1990. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [pp. 445-449]).
9
ARW's essay written on Ternate in February 1858 and sent to Darwin, "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type".
10
In a previous letter to Hooker (5 July [1858]), Darwin wrote: ʺI can easily prepare an abstract of my whole work, but I can hardly see how it can be made scientific for a Journal, without giving facts, which would be impossible. Indeed a mere abstract cannot be very short.- Could you give me any idea how many pages of Journal, could probably be spared me? Directly after my return home, I would begin & cut my cloth to my measure.- If the Referees were to reject it as not strictly scientific I would, perhaps publish it as pamphet.-ʺ (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [pp. 127-128]).
11
Bentham, G. 1858. Handbook of the British Flora. London, UK: Lovell Reeve. According to the Darwin Correspondence Project, Darwin ʺwas anxious to tabulate the work for his study of varieties in large and small generaʺ (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 131]).
12
Norman, Ebenezer ( — ). Schoolmaster of the national school in Down; often employed by Darwin for copying work. According to the Darwin Correspondence Project, Norman compiled the tables from various botanical and entomological catalogues that CD used for calculating the ratio of varieties in large and small generaʺ (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 131]).
13
Hooker (née Henslow), Frances Harriet (1825-1874). British botanist, translator and first wife of J. D. Hooker.
14
According to the Darwin Correspondence Project, Frances Hooker had drafted a presentable copy of Darwin’s enclosure to Asa Gray (see n. 8) (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 131, n. 8]).
15
According to the Darwin Correspondence Project, Darwin had observed ants when at Hartfield (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 131]).
16
Darwin was interested in flower anatomy in relation to pollination by bees. In a 4 July 1858 letter to Asa Gray, he wrote: ʺ I suspect from my own few observations that the following rule may be gen-eralised (& I sh[oul]d. much like to know whether it is true) that when honey is secreted on one point of circle of corolla, the pistil if it bends, always bends so that the stigmas, when mature, lie in the gangway to nectary. Thus in Columbine where there is a circle of nectaries, the stigmas are straight; in Aquilegia grandiflora where there is one nectary, the stigmas are rectangularly bent so that every Bee (as I this day saw) brushes over them in extracting the honey.-ʺ (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 126]).

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP5298.5842)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Darwin Correspondence Project [2018-02-23] Transcription checked by Barton, Michael [2019-12-20]

Please cite as “WCP5298,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5298