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Darwin Correspondence Project

To A. R. Wallace   31 August 1877

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

Aug 31. 1877

My dear Wallace,

I am very much obliged to you for sending your article; which is very interesting & appears to me as clearly written as it can be.1 You will not be surprised that I differ altogether from you about sexual colours. That the tail of the peacock & his elaborate display of it should be due merely to the vigour, activity, & vitality of the male is to me as utterly incredible as my views are to you.2 Mantegazza published a few years ago in Italy a somewhat similar view.3 I cannot help doubting about recognition through colour: our horses dogs, fowls, & pigeons seem to know their own species however differently the individuals may be coloured. I wonder whether you attribute the odoriferous & sound producing organs, when confined to the males to their greater vigour &c. I could say a good deal in opposition to you, but my arguments would have no weight in your eyes & I do not intend to write for the public anything on this or any other difficult subject. By the way I doubt whether the term voluntary in relation to sexual selection ought to be employed: when a man is fascinate⁠⟨⁠d⁠⟩⁠ by a pretty girl it can hardly be called voluntary, & I suppose that female animals are charmed or excited in nearly the same manner by the gaudy males.

Three essays have been published lately in Germany which would interest you: one by Weismann who shows that the coloured stripes on the caterpillars of sphinx are beautifully protective: & birds were frightened away from their feeding place by a caterpillar with large eye-like spots on the broad anterior segments of the body.4 Fritz Müller has well discussed the first steps of mimicry with butterflies, & comes to nearly or quite the same conclusions as you, but supports it by additional arguments.5 Fritz Müller also has lately shown that the males alone of certain butterflies have odoriferous glands on their wings (distinct from those which secrete matter disgusting to birds) & where these glands are placed, the scales assume a different shape making little tufts.6

Farewell—I hope that you find Dorking a pleasant place? I was staying lately at Abinger Hall & wished to come over to see you but driving tires me so much that my courage failed.7

Yours very sincerely | Chas. Darwin

Footnotes

Wallace sent a copy of the September issue of Macmillan’s Magazine, which contained the first part of his article ‘The colours of animals and plants’ (A. R. Wallace 1877). CD’s annotated copy of the issue is in DAR 133: 18.1.
CD and Wallace had a longstanding debate about sexual dimorphism in regard to colour (see, for example, Correspondence vol. 16, letter from A. R. Wallace, 18 September [1868], and letter to A. R. Wallace, 23 September [1868]; see also A. R. Wallace 1866, 1867, and 1868). In his article, Wallace argued that bright, intense colours were signs of robust health (A. R. Wallace 1877, p. 398); CD double-scored the passage in his copy.
Paolo Mantegazza had criticised CD’s theory of sexual selection in Descent, especially the role of female choice (see Mantegazza 1871 and Correspondence vol. 19, letter to Paolo Mantegazza, 22 September 1871).
The first essay in the second volume of August Weismann’s Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie (Studies on the theory of descent; Weismann 1876) was ‘Die Entstehung der Zeichnung bei den Schmetterlings-Raupen’ (The origin of markings on caterpillars of butterflies; Weismann 1876, pp. 1–137). CD’s annotated copy is in the Darwin Library–CUL. Weismann had studied caterpillars of Chaerocampa elpenor (a synonym of Deilephila elpenor, the elephant hawk-moth) and Chaerocampa porcellus (a synonym of Deilephila porcellus, the small elephant hawk-moth).
See Fritz Müller 1876 and A. R. Wallace 1877, pp. 396–8. Wallace had earlier commented on some of Müller’s observations on mimicry (see Correspondence vol. 19, letter from Fritz Müller, 14 June 1871, and letter from A. R. Wallace, 7 August 1871).
Müller described the glands in his article ‘Ueber Haarpinsel, Filzflecke und ähnliche Gebilde auf den Flügeln männlicher Schmetterlinge’ (On hair-tufts, felted spots and similar structures on the wings of male butterflies; Fritz Müller 1877b). CD’s lightly annotated copy is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL.
In July 1876, Wallace had moved to Dorking, Surrey, which was near Abinger Hall, the home of Thomas Henry Farrer, where CD had visited from 20 to 25 August 1877 (see Raby 2001, p. 216, and CD’s ‘Journal’ (Appendix II)).

Bibliography

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

Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.

Raby, Peter. 2001. Alfred Russel Wallace: a life. London: Chatto & Windus.

Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1877. The colours of animals and plants. Macmillan’s Magazine 36: 384–408, 464–71.

Weismann, August. 1876. Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie. II. Über die letzten Ursachen der Transmutationen. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.

Summary

Response to Wallace’s article ["The colours of animals and plants", Macmillan’s Mag. (Sept 1877)] on sexual colours and "voluntary" sexual selection.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11121
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Alfred Russel Wallace
Sent from
Down
Source of text
The British Library (Add MS 46434)
Physical description
LS 6pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11121,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11121.xml

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