From T. V. Wollaston1 [27 June 1856]2
it sd. have in any way affected (for even a single night) the functions of your alimentary canal; &, could I have foreseen this, I should most certainly have given an anti-dyspeptic chapter, of a sedative tendency.—3
As regards your question about the other Orders of Madeiran insects, I believe I can say thus much: that they do not, apparently, include forms generally anomalous, or at all comparable with the Coleoptera. Indeed that Atlantic region (that continuous Atlantic province which it puts you in such a rage to think about) was I believe, strictly, a Beetle-land (what a glorious place it must have been!),—a Scarabæoideous area of radiation; numbering amongst its endemic forms few remarkable modifications (I mean primary modifications, of course) which were not Coleopterous. It might be defined as a Scarabæo- and Helico-metropolis;4 & magnificent sport it must have been, to our Atlantic ancestors, to give free scope to their hunting propensities in such a land: it makes one’s modern entomological blood curdle
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Natural selection: Charles Darwin’s Natural selection: being the second part of his big species book written from 1856 to 1858. Edited by R. C. Stauffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1975.
Summary
Madeiran insects. Regards the "Atlantic province" as a centre of the Coleoptera.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-1912
- From
- Thomas Vernon Wollaston
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 181: 137
- Physical description
- inc †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 1912,” accessed on 26 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-1912.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 6