From Henry Doubleday 3 April 1868
Epping
April 3rd 1868
My dear Sir,
I have great pleasure in lending you Dr Staudinger’s catalogue of Europæan Lepidoptera— You will see that I have marked a few species with a + of which the males are priced higher than the females but the latter sex is apterous and some of them like mere maggots and I expect few collectors care about more than one specimen as they are certainly not ornamental in a cabinet— I do not think there are a dozen other species of which the males are priced higher than the females—1 I do not think there would be any fallacy to this test—(money value) as it clearly shows that females are more difficult to procure than the males and although in a few cases this may arise from the different habits of the two sexes yet this cannot be said of the butterflies and I think there is not an instance among them of the male being priced higher than the female—2 You can keep the Catalogue as long as you please—
Last evening I heard an Anobium ticking and found it— I will send it to you— if you place the pill box on a table I daresay you will hear it ticking in the evening and if the lid is carefully taken off and you imitate its ticking I have no doubt you will soon find that it will answer you—3
With best wishes believe me | My dear Sir | Yours very Sincerely | Henry Doubleday
C Darwin Esq
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.
Salmon, Michael A. 2000. The Aurelian legacy: British butterflies and their collectors. With additional material by Peter Marren and Basil Harley. Colchester: Harley Books.
Summary
Otto Staudinger’s catalogue shows prices of female Lepidoptera to be higher than those of males.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6087
- From
- Henry Doubleday
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Epping
- Source of text
- DAR 81: 78, DAR 82: A8
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp † & cov †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6087,” accessed on 1 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6087.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 16