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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Francis Galton   26 April 1870

5 Bertie Terrace | Leamington

April 26/70

My dear Darwin

Two more litters & no happy results, the young being all true silver greys.1

There ought to have been a third litter but the doe had not kindled. I shall next give a fresh infusion to every one of my old stock and hope to raise the proportion of alien blood in their bodies to at least 3 per cent of their entire weight or, say, 30 per cent of their entire blood.

I am obliged to defer all this for a week or two longer for my mother2 has been lying at the verge of death for a fortnight & I am wanted by her. She is now a trifle better & her illness—the results of bronchitis—may be less acute for a while & I may be able to get back to London— We have no reasonable hope that she will ever recover even a most moderate degree of health.

Very sincerely yours | Francis Galton

Footnotes

Galton was transfusing rabbits’ blood into other rabbits to test CD’s hypothesis of pangenesis; his last letter was on 8 April 1870.
Violetta Galton.

Summary

Rabbits still running true; hopes to increase alien blood to 30%.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-7175
From
Francis Galton
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Leamington
Source of text
DAR 105: A15–16
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7175,” accessed on 24 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7175.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18

letter