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Darwin Correspondence Project

To Armand de Quatrefages   3 July [1862]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

July 3d

Dear Sir

Although I know how much you are occupied, yet I venture to request the great favour of some information, which I think that you can give me (& allow me to quote on your authority) without very great trouble. I can find no account of any differences in the moths of the several races of the common silk-worm. I have been told by one person that they are all closely similar.2 Is this really the case? Do not the moths from the cocoons of various shapes, with white & yellow silk, present any differences? I refer, of course, only to the supposed races of Bombyx mori.— If you have not attended to this small point, probably M. Guérin de Méneville would at once be able to answer.—3

As I am writing I will ask one more question: a person in England, who formerly kept many silk worms & even had persons from France to attend to them, assured me positively that the wings of the female moth, when she first came out of the cocoon, appeared less developed than those of the male; is this the case? but ultimately the wings of both males & females acquired the same degree (as I found by measurement) of imperfect development. I know your observations on the wings in your Études & have just quoted them in my M.S. work, which I am preparing on “Variation under Domestication”.—4

I can only trust to the great kindness, which you have several times showed me to forgive me for thus troubling you.— With sincere respect, I remain | Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Footnotes

The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter to Armand de Quatrefages, 11 July [1862] (Correspondence vol. 10).
Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville introduced silkworms to France.
CD’s English informant was Whitby; see Correspondence vol. 4, letter to M. A. T. Whitby, 14 October [1847]. In Variation 1: 303, CD also quoted Quatrefages’s Études sur les maladies actuelles du ver à soie (Studies on the current sicknesses of the silkworm; Quatrefages 1859). Whitby had brought a 19-year-old French woman who knew how to operate a silk-winder to England to help her produce silk for the loom (Colp 1972, p. 871).

Bibliography

Colp, Ralph, Jr. 1972. Charles Darwin and Mrs. Whitby. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 2d ser. 48: 870–6.

Quatrefages, Armand de. 1859. Études sur les maladies actuelles du ver à soie. Paris: Victor Masson.

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

Summary

Can AdeQ verify the statement that the moths of the several races of the common silkworm are very similar?

When the female moth comes out of the cocoon, are her wings less developed than those of a male moth at the same stage?

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3640F,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3640F.xml

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