From C. H. Browning 10 March 1879
Lake Point Hotel, Great Salt Lake | Tooele Valley, Utah Ter.
March 10th. 1879.
Mr. Charles Darwin
Dear Sir:
While reading your work on the Origin of Species I came to that part, in which you treat of inherited effects and thinking that the following curious fact might be of some little interest to you I have taken the liberty of writing to you.1
Several years ago a gentleman in Washington through sickness, became completely bald, after his recovery he married and has now five children, three sons and two daughters. At a corresponding age the three sons successively became as bald as their father while the daughters do not show the slightest signs of loosing their hair.
Do you not think this an astonishingly good example of inherited effects?
Resp’t’f’ly Yrs. | C.H. Browning
Footnotes
Bibliography
Origin 6th ed.: The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 6th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1872.
Summary
Is reading Origin on inheritance. Reports case of a man who went bald through illness, whose three sons, all born later, also became bald.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11922
- From
- C. H. Browning
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Great Salt Lake, Utah
- Source of text
- DAR 160: 333
- Physical description
- ALS 1p
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11922,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11922.xml
