From Francis Galton 11 December 1869
42 Rutland Gate. S.W.
Dec 11. 69
My dear Darwin
I wonder if you could help me. I want to make some peculiar experiments that have occurred to me, in breeding animals and want to procure a few couples of rabbits of marked and assured breeds—viz:
Lop-ears with as little tendency to Albinism as possible. Common rabbits ditto Angora albinos
and I find myself wholly unable to get them, though I have asked many people. Do you know anybody who has such things.?1
I write without your book in reach, but you there especially mention a breeder of Angoras.2 Also you quote with approbation from Delamer’s little book.3 Are either or both of those men accessible & likely to help.?
Pray excuse my troubling you— the interest of the proposed experiment—for it is really a curious one,—must be my justification
Very sincerely yrs. | Francis Galton
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bulmer, Michael. 2003. Francis Galton: pioneer of heredity and biometry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Delamer, Eugene Sebastian [Edmund Saul Dixon]. 1854. Pigeons and rabbits, in their wild, domestic, & captive states. London: G. Routledge.
Galton, Francis. 1871. Experiments in pangenesis, by breeding from rabbits of a pure variety, into whose circulation blood taken from other varieties had previously been largely transfused. [Read 30 March 1871.] Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 19 (1870–1): 393–410.
Marginalia: Charles Darwin’s marginalia. Edited by Mario A. Di Gregorio with the assistance of Nicholas W. Gill. Vol. 1. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 1990.
Pearson, Karl. 1914–30. The life, letters and labours of Francis Galton. 3 vols. in 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Summary
Asks CD’s advice on procuring rabbits for experiments [to test Pangenesis by transfusing alien blood into does and breeding from them].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7026
- From
- Francis Galton
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- London, Rutland Gate, 42
- Source of text
- DAR 105: 1–2
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7026,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7026.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17
