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Darwin Correspondence Project

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

See letter from E. B. Wilson, 5 December 1881. Wilson had described a species of nudibranch mollusc that resembled the fronds of the seaweed where it lived.
Hippocampus is the genus of seahorses. Albert Günther had described and figured a species of pipefish, Phyllopteryx eques (a synonym of Phycodurus eques, the leafy seadragon), in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London; he noted the resemblance of the fish to seaweed of a similar colour (Günther 1865, p. 328). The genera Hippocampus, Phyllopteryx, and Phycodurus are in the family Syngnathidae (pipefishes and seahorses).

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

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