To E. B. Wilson 21 December 1881
[Down.]
December 21, 1881.
Dear Sir,
I thank you much for having taken so much trouble in describing fully your interesting and curious case of mimickry.1
I am in the habit of looking through many scientific Journals, and though my memory is now not nearly so good as it was, I feel pretty sure that no such case as yours has been described (amongst the nudibranch) molluscs. You perhaps know the case of a fish allied to Hippocampus, (described some years ago by Dr Günther in Proc. Zoolog. Socy.) which clings by its tail to sea-weeds, and is covered with waving filaments so as itself to look like a piece of the same sea-weed.2 The parallelism between your and Dr Gùnther’s case makes both of them the more interesting; considering how far a fish and a mollusc stand apart. It wd. be difficult for anyone to explain such cases by the direct action of the environment.— I am glad that you intend to make further observations on this mollusc, and I hope that you will give a figure and if possible a coloured figure.
With all good wishes from an old brother naturalist,
I remain, Dear Sir, | Yours faithfully, | Charles Darwin.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Günther, Albert. 1865. On the pipe-fishes belonging to the genus Phyllopteryx. [Read 28 March 1865.] Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1865): 327–8.
Summary
Thanks EBW for his curious case of mimicry in Scyllaea, which parallels that observed by Albert Günther in Hippocampus.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13571
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Edmund Beecher Wilson
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- , p. 279
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13571,” accessed on 24 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13571.xml