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To J.-H. Fabre   20 February 1880

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Feb 20/80

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your kind letter and am delighted that you will try the experiment of rotation.1 It is a very curious that such a belief should be held about cats in your country. I never heard of anything of the kind in England.2 I was led, as I believe, to think of the experiment from having read in Wrangel’s Travels in Siberia of the wonderful power which the Samoyedes possess of keeping their direction in a fog whilst travelling in a tortuous line through broken ice.3 With respect to the cats, I have seen an account that in Belgium there is a society which gives prizes to the cat which can soonest find its way home, & for this purpose they are carried to distant parts of the city—4 Here would be a capital opportunity for trying rotation.

I am extremely glad to hear that your book will probably be translated into English.5

With much respect | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

P.S. | I shall be much pleased to hear the result of your experiments

Footnotes

1
See letter from J.-H. Fabre, 18 February 1880. The experiment was designed to test the homing instinct of insects.
2
Fabre had described a practice common among local people of turning a cat round in a bag to disorient it so it would not return to a previous location (letter from J.-H. Fabre, 18 February 1880).
3
Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel had written an account of his exploration of Polar regions (Wrangel 1840) that included several accounts of the dense fog and the difficulties of navigating in it. Samoyedes (now more commonly Samoyedic people) are closely related ethnic groups of traditionally nomadic people of northern Siberia.
4
The Belgian practice of cat racing was described in an article in the Pictorial Times, 16 June 1860; the article was reprinted in a book on cats (Weir 1889, p. 218). According to the article the prizes were a ham and a silver spoon to the owner whose cat found its way home soonest.
5
In the event, an English translation of Fabre’s Souvenirs entomologiques (Fabre 1879) appeared in 1913 (Fabre 1913).

Bibliography

Fabre, Jean-Henri. 1879. Souvenirs entomologiques: études sur l’instinct et les mœurs des insectes. Paris: Librairie Ch. Delagrave.

Fabre, Jean-Henri. 1913. Insect life: souvenirs of a naturalist. Translated by the author of ‘Mademoiselle Mori’ [Margaret Roberts] with a preface by David Sharp and edited by F. Merrifield. London: Macmillan and Co.

Weir, Harrison. 1889. Our cats and all about them: their varieties, habits, and management; and for show, the standard of excellence and beauty. Tunbridge Wells: R. Clements and Co.

Wrangel, Ferdinand Petrovich von. 1840. Narrative of an expedition to the Polar Sea, in the years 1820, 1821, 1822, & 1823. Commanded by lieutenant, now admiral, Ferdinand von Wrangell, of the Russian Imperial Navy. Translated from the German by Elizabeth Juliana Sabine. Edited by Edward Sabine. London: James Madden.

Summary

Discusses sense of direction of cats and other animals.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12494
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Jean-Henri Casimir (Jean-Henri) Fabre
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Bibliothèque centrale, Paris (Ms FAB 32)
Physical description
LS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12494,” accessed on 27 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12494.xml

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