illiterate web

I am much obliged for your kind and long communication, which I have read with great interest, as well as your articles in "Nature." The subject seems to me as important and interesting as it is difficult. I am much out of health, and working very hard on a very different subject, so thus I cannot give your remarks the attention which they deserve. I will, however, keep your letter for some later time, when I may again take up the subject. Your letter makes it clearer to me than it ever was before, how a part or organ which has already begun from any cause to decrease, will go on decreasing through so-called spontaneous variability, with intercrossing; for under such circumstances it is very unlikely that there should be variation in the direction of increase beyond the average size, and no reason why there should not be variations of decrease. I think this expresses your view. I had intended this summer subjecting plants to [illegible] conditions, and observing the effects on variation; but the work would be very laborious, yet I am inclined to think it will be hereafter worth the labour.

LETTER 265. TO T. MEEHAN. Down, October 9th, 1874.

I am glad that you are attending to the colours of dioecious flowers; but it is well to remember that their colours may be as unimportant to them as those of a gall, or, indeed, as the colour of an amethyst or ruby is to these gems. Some thirty years ago I began to investigate the little purple flowers in the centre of the umbels of the carrot. I suppose my memory is wrong, but it tells me that these flowers are female, and I think that I once got a seed from one of them; but my memory may be quite wrong. I hope that you will continue your interesting researches.

LETTER 266. TO G. JAGER. Down, February 3rd, 1875.

I received this morning a copy of your work "Contra Wigand," either from yourself or from your publisher, and I am greatly obliged for it. (266/1. Jager's "In Sachen Darwins insbesondere contra Wigand" (Stuttgart, 1874) is directed against A. Wigand's "Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung Newtons und Cuviers" (Brunswick, 1874).) I had, however, before bought a copy, and have sent the new one to our best library, that of the Royal Society. As I am a very poor german scholar, I have as yet read only about forty pages; but these have interested me in the highest degree. Your remarks on fixed and variable species deserve the greatest attention; but I am not at present quite convinced that there are such independent of the conditions to which they are subjected. I think you have done great service to the principle of evolution, which we both support, by publishing this work. I am the more glad to read it as I had not time to read Wigand's great and tedious volume.

LETTER 267. TO CHAUNCEY WRIGHT. Down, March 13th, 1875.

I write to-day so that there shall be no delay this time in thanking you for your interesting and long letter received this morning. I am sure that you will excuse brevity when I tell you that I am half-killing myself in trying to get a book ready for the press. (267/1. The MS. of "Insectivorous Plants" was got ready for press in March, 1875. Darwin seems to have been more than usually oppressed by the work.) I quite agree with what you say about advantages of various degrees of importance being co-selected (267/2. Mr. Chauncey Wright wrote (February 24th, 1875): "The inquiry as to which of several real uses is the one through which Natural Selection has acted...has for several years seemed to me a somewhat less important question than it seemed formerly, and still appears to most thinkers on the subject...The uses of the rattling of the rattlesnake as a protection by warning its enemies and as a sexual call are not rival uses; neither are the high-reaching and the far-seeing uses of the giraffe's neck 'rivals.'"), and aided by the effects of use, etc. The subject seems to me well worth further development. I do not think I have anywhere noticed the use of the eyebrows, but have long known that they protected the eyes from sweat. During the voyage of the "Beagle" one of the men ascended a lofty hill during a very hot day. He had small eyebrows, and his eyes became fearfully inflamed from the sweat running into them. The Portuguese inhabitants were familiar with this evil. I think you allude to the transverse furrows on the forehead as a protection against sweat; but remember that these incessantly appear on the foreheads of baboons.

P.S.--I have been greatly pleased by the notices in the "Nation."