skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

To T. H. Huxley   21 [January 1860]1

Down Bromley Kent

21st

My dear Huxley

I have told Murray to send you copy of 2d. Edit of my Book.2 I ought to have thought of this before, as you have been beyond all or nearly all the warmest & most important supporter. I did not think of it, simply from the corrections being so few (of which I send list)3 & now I really hardly know whether you will care to have copy; but you can give it away, if you do not care.—

I long to have a little talk with you. I had firmly resolved to come up & dine with you all at Athenæum, but my accursed health made it impossible.4 I intend coming up on Tuesday evening & will call early on Wednesday at Museum for chance of seeing you; & shd. I fail on Wednesday in being able to come or in your not being there I will call on Thursday.—5

Could you let me have on Wednesday at Museum Pigeon M.S.—6 I am beginning to think of, & arrange my fuller work;7 & the subject is like an enchanted circle; I cannot tell how or where to begin.—

By strange chance, since sending you the Drawings, I have had specimen & have now prepared the skull of the Bagadotten (of which I send Plate out of German Book) & the extraordinarily curved beak is not exaggerated.—8

I cannot think it possible that you can wish to keep, but I do not want M.S. on Hybrids.

In Haste | My dear Huxley | Most truly yours | C. Darwin

I have never received from Ray Soc. your Volume on Hydrozoa:9 I must enquire what cause is.

[Enclosure]

Additions to 2d. Edit— Verbal corrections & omissions not noticed.—

Pages New. Edit

p 17. 18 Pallasian doctrine made clearer10

49. Primula vars & elatior names corrected.11

72 Age of little fir trees corrected12

73 case of clover made stronger13

97 case of parthenogenesis alluded to14

165 Mules in U. States striped, added15

214 Sentence about Pointing dogs added16

219–223 Slave-ants made clearer17

253 sentence about crossed pheasant added.18

286 Weald-Denudation made milder (ought to be still more slacked off)19

303 Birds fossil instead of Whale20

336 sentence added on Advancement of organisation.21

390, 391 crossing keeping birds of Madeira & Bermuda unchanged22

425. Argumentum ad hominem malum, Huxley, struck out23

452. Nascent organs added24

480 Bit of Theology from Kingsley added25

Footnotes

1
The month and year are established by the reference to CD’s trip to London (see n. 5, below). This letter was previously published in Correspondence vol. 8 without the enclosure, which was found subsequently.
2
The second edition of Origin was published by John Murray on 7 January 1860 (Correspondence vol. 8, Appendix II).
3
For CD’s list of corrections, see also the enclosure with the letter to Asa Gray, 1 February [1860] (Correspondence vol. 8).
4
Huxley became a member of the Athenaeum Club in 1858. CD had been a member since 1838. The dinner referred to took place on 19 January, and those attending included Huxley, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and certain unidentified ‘Naturalists’. See Correspondence vol. 8, letter to J. D. Hooker, [22 January 1860].
5
Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242) indicates that CD was in London from Tuesday 24 to Friday 27 January. Huxley had an office in the Museum of Practical Geology.
6
CD had lent Huxley his manuscript describing the results of his study of domestic pigeons to assist Huxley in the preparation of his Royal Institution lecture on 10 February 1860 (T. H. Huxley 1860). See Correspondence vol. 7, letters to T. H. Huxley, 16 December [1859] and 24 December [1859].
7
CD had begun to prepare the more comprehensive work on natural selection in which he planned to give further examples and citations not included in Origin. The first part of this project, Variation, appeared in 1868. The second and third parts were ultimately abandoned.
8
The Bagadotten-Tauben is a breed of pigeon in which the beak curves downwards ‘in a highly remarkable manner’ (Variation 1: 141, 163). The German book to which CD refers is W. Riedel 1824. There is an annotated copy in the Darwin Library–CUL.
9
T. H. Huxley 1859. A copy of the work, published by the Ray Society, is in the Darwin Library–Down.
10
Pyotr Simon Pallas believed that domesticated animals had descended from two or more aboriginal species; see also Origin, pp. 253–4.
11
In Origin, p. 49, CD had referred to the primrose and the cowslip as ‘Primula veris and elatior’; in Origin 2d ed., p. 49, he corrected this to ‘Primula vulgaris and veris’.
12
In Origin, p. 72, CD described a fir tree that had failed to grow higher than the surrounding heath for twenty-six years, ‘judging by the rings of growth’; in Origin 2d ed., p. 72, he changed this to ‘many years’.
13
In Origin, p. 73, CD had written that the visits of bees, ‘if not indispensable’, were ‘at least highly beneficial’ to the fertilisation of British clovers; in Origin 2d ed., p. 73, he changed this to ‘necessary for the fertilisation of some kinds of clover’.
14
The addition ‘(with the exception of the curious and not well-understood cases of parthenogenesis)’ is in Origin 2d ed., p. 96.
15
‘[A]ccording to Mr. Gosse, in certain parts of the United States about nine out of ten mules have striped legs.’ (Philip Henry Gosse.)
16
‘[T]he act of pointing is probably, as many have thought, only the exaggerated pause of an animal preparing to spring on its prey.’
17
The changes are mostly in Origin 2d ed., pp. 221–3.
18
‘There is no doubt that these three pheasants, namely, the common, the true ring-necked, and the Japan, intercross, and are becoming blended together in the woods of several parts of England.’
19
CD made changes to Origin 2d ed., p. 287, conceding that the denudation of the Weald, a district between the North and South Downs in Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, may have taken 100 thousand years rather than 300 thousand years; he eliminated the discussion in the third edition. See also Correspondence vol. 8, letter to Charles Lyell, 10 January [1860] and n. 3.
20
In Origin 2d ed., p. 304, CD used birds’ bones rather than whales’ bones as an example of gaps in the fossil record that had been filled relatively recently.
21
‘The best definition probably is, that the higher forms have their organs more distinctly specialised for different functions; and as such division of physiological labour seems to be an advantage to each being, natural selection will constantly tend in so far to make the later and more modified forms higher than their early progenitors, or than the slightly modified descendants of such progenitors.’
22
In Origin 2d ed., p. 391, CD added that any tendency to vary in the bird species of Bermuda and Madeira would have been checked by ‘intercrossing with the unmodified immigrants from the mother-country’.
23
‘Argument against a bad man, Huxley, struck out.’ CD did not include this line in the similar list of corrections he sent to Gray (see n. 3, above). He had removed a paragraph in Origin, p. 425, which contained an ‘argumentum ad hominem’ about how to classify a kangaroo born from a bear, as part of a discussion of the part already played by descent in classification. See Correspondence vol. 7, first letter to T. H. Huxley, 25 November [1859].
24
CD added a paragraph distinguishing rudimentary and nascent organs.
25
The statement by Charles Kingsley (‘a celebrated author and divine’) was added to Origin 2d ed., p. 481.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1859b. The oceanic Hydrozoa; a description of the Calycophoidæ and Physophoridæ observed during the voyage of HMS ‘Rattlesnake’, in the years 1846–1850. London.

Huxley, Thomas Henry. 1860b. On species and races, and their origin. Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 3 (1858–62): 195–200. [Reprinted in Foster and Lankester eds. 1898–1903, 2: 388–94.]

Origin 2d ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1860.

Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.

Riedel, Wilhelm. 1824. Die Taubenzucht in ihrem ganzen Umfange, oder, vollständige Anweisung zur Kenntniss des Taubenschlags. Ulm, Germany: J. Ebnerschen Buchhandlung.

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Summary

Sends copy of 2d ed. of Origin, with list of corrections.

Is at work on "fuller work" [Variation].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-2660
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Thomas Henry Huxley
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Janet Huxley (private collection); Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine Archives (Huxley 5: 102)
Physical description
ALS 4pp & enc 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2660,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2660.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge