My dear Sir

In reading carefully of late your Descent of Man, Sexual Selection, & Expression of the Emotions I have been struck with some statements of facts which I regarded as erroneous & also have been reminded of facts corroborating your statements or even going further, which I have jotted down & propose to embody as briefly as possible. No one, so candid and so just as you are, will more rejoice I feel sure if an inadvertent error is eliminated than yourself. Pardon me therefore if I venture to call attention to such.

I quote pages from Appleton’s reprint of the Descent &^c. 1872 & the Emotions dated 1873.—¹

Descent & Sexual Selection Vol. I.

p. 19 middle— You state that the platysma is an involuntary muscle. On the contrary it is a perfectly voluntary muscle & can be brought into action as perfectly & easily as any muscle. (P.S. You have corrected this in the book on Expression p 298 et seqq.)²

p 20. middle.— The power of voluntarily moving the ears is not unusual as you intimate. Many persons can do so. Most persons in laughing & even smiling move the ears upwards & I think forwards. Possibly the ears are pushed up by the soft parts on the face but I think it is not so.

p. 22 top. I have lately seen a medical friend in whose ears the tubercle instead of being turned inwards remains turned up- & out-wards so that the ear is really a pointed one. If I can do so I hope to obtain for you a Photograph of the auricle.³ Of course you have seen the recent article in Virchow’s Archiv on this Subject⁴ & are familiar probably with this peculiarity in Hawthorne’s fiction of “Transformation or The Marble Faun” in Donatello who resembles so strikingly the Faun of Praxiteles.*⁵

p. 24. bottom. The peculiarity noticed by Mr. Paget as hereditary is I think not only (if particularly) hereditary, but, in this country, is very common with advancing age.⁶ D^r. Wayland late Pres. Brown Univ^y. & the author of noted text books on Polit. Econ. Moral & Mental Philos. &^c. was noted for his bushy shaggy eyebrows & his 2 living sons markedly resemble him in this⁷

pp. 48–9. With respect to animals learning to avoid traps. With my friend Dr. S. Weir Mitchell I have had much to do with Rattlesnakes. We generally kept them in deep boxes & caught them by means of a long pole with a leather noose at the end. A green (i.e. new) snake could be caught with perfect ease but in a few days after being caught 4 or 5 times he would dodge the noose & in a little time considerable dexterity was required to catch them.⁸

p. 52 bottom. See Marsh’s Lectures on the Eng. Lang. p. 35 (note) for the Statement that the Massacre of the Sicilian Vespers was all arranged by facial gestures alone no other gestures & no words being used. & some other Statements. The book referred to is not his “Eng. Lang. & its Early Literature”.⁹

p. 143. If you will observe carefully the hair is best developed not “on the chest & face & junction of the 4 limbs with the trunk” but in the Median line of the body. E.g. On the head it comes to a point in the median line both in front & behind, if whiskers are absent a median¹⁰

*An argument to support your view is the growth of the hair up- & for-wards on the top of the auricle with advancing years, more than over the rest of the auricle except the lobule & tragus

[at least 1 folio missing]

assurance that it was so, & that the holes were eaten where the pipes were not obstacles to progress I can scarcely believe that their intelligence has been so cultivated by familiarity with civilized man’s means for getting water as to lead to such an act of reason. I mention it however for what it is worth.¹¹

One point in reference to sexual selection I have to suggest when I am done with my rambling & I fear almost worthless letter. I do not know but that it should rather be classed however as natural selection in relation to sex. I mean the peculiar effect of certain diseases on one sex or the other by reason of the frequency with which it attacks one sex as compared with the other.

My memory may be at fault but I do not recall any allusion to it in any of your books. Yet it must have its influence both as to the number of Survivors of each sex & as to the questions of inheritance in that sex alone or in major part. As an allied subject also I would suggest the fact now believed by many to be true (& my self among the number) that Syphilis (& possibly other diseases) though existing in the Father cannot be & is not transmitted to the child except the mother be first infected ie. if she escapes direct infection the child will also. It is widely & vehemently disputed by many Syphilographers but its supporters I think have the strongest side.¹²

I hope you will pardon me Sir if I have fruitlessly taken up your time. What is of value if there be any I shall be delighted to have you weigh & use if you think best.

While not able to follow you quite as far as you go, yet I accept most of it gladly & as a daily teacher I enjoy the light you have shed on much that has been dark & unmeaning. With the hope that your life may be spared a long while to cement what you have so well built I remain | very respectfully | Your Ob’t Sv’t | W. W. Keen M.D. | Lecturer on Anatomy in the Philadelphia School of Anatomy | Lecturer on Pathol. Anat. in the Jefferson Med. College Phila | Joint Author of Gunshot Wounds & other Injuries of Nerves &¹³

(I beg leave to name these as an introduction)

I forgot to mention an inherited peculiarity in my children of the use of a single muscle. My wife¹⁴ when perplexed or in deep thought often contracts the 2 Corrugator Supercillii muscles just enough to produce a single deep furrow but not a general frown; in fact it is rather almost a pit than a furrow its border is so sharply curved thus. I have 3 children all girls 5, 4 & 2$\frac{1}{2}$ years old.¹⁵ The eldest & youngest resemble me very markedly & the middle one her mother. The eldest & youngest both will frown when perplexed &^c. but it is a more general frown while the 2^d. child has the most striking reproduction of this her mothers use of the Corrugator.¹⁶

[Dr. Keen, of Philadelphia, calls attention (letter n. d.),¹⁷ to his paper in the ‘Med. and Surg. History of the War of the Rebellion (Surgical Part),’ vol. i. pp. 206–7, bearing on this point. A patient lost part of his skull by a gunshot wound, and recovered with a concavity on the surface of his head, into which the scalp dipped to the depth of an inch. Ordinary respiration did not affect the concavity, but on moderate coughing a little cone bulged up, and a severe cough changed the concavity into a convex surface rising above the surface of the head.]¹⁸