Sir,

I hope that you will excuse the liberty I have taken in addressing you though not having the pleasure of being personally acquainted.

Perhaps the subject if not the matter may prove a sufficient extenuation. Your “Origin of Species”¹ I read almost as soon as it was published was very much struck with it and felt convinced that you had solved a great problem in the world’s history and given a new direction to thought. I am now finishing the first volume of your Variation of animals and plants under domestication² and every now and then many circumstances have been brought to my recollection in connection with the subject   I have therefore made notes of them and should you wish it would forward any that may be likely to interest and prove useful to you in the consolidation of your theory, on the principle that small stones may fill up crevices.

At the end of your “Origin of Species” you make an appeal to young naturalists,³ perhaps you meant to include also mere observers and I venture to put myself in this latter class, being 24 years of age and having always been fond of natural history especially ornithology and thinking with Gilbert White that labour should be divided and every place should have its own monographer I have made occasional ornithological notes having in view more particularly the making of a list of birds seen in this neighbourhood, then the rest of Portugal and those migrating through.⁴ My occupation (being in business as a commission merchant) will not allow me to apportion more than a limited time to my favourite study but as I am fond of shooting curiosities in natural history sometimes come before my notice   This country having been hitherto isolated from the rest of Europe in a great measure has never been properly explored and I have little doubt that much might be learnt here—

What I wish to bring before your notice is a curious fact with regard to the pointer dog which is occasionally born here without more than a stump of a tail varying in size— I know of one very decided case which first made me enquire about them and I am told by several people that it is by no means a very uncommon occurrence and have since heard of no less than 3 other cases 2 of them said to be now living in this city   this coupled with the fact that it is a general custom here to cut the pointer’s tail off leaving only a stump and that the greater part of them are thus mutilated, leads me to suppose that the oft repeated cutting of the tail has had a strong influence on the birth of tail-less dogs and dogs born with only half a tail   I do not know that an analogous case has ever been mentioned and after strict verification and enquiry it may be found to bear on your hypothesis of Pangenesis & your general theory.⁵ I think that I have observed a similar case with regard to the comb of game cocks. Though no doubt selection in early times before cutting the comb was thought of, may have favoured those birds with smallest combs still man’s interference in dubbing them has for a long time rendered selection on that point unnecessary.

I intend to try to make the tail-less feature constant by breeding tail-less dogs inter-se which would be the more curious if it were proved that it is an inheritance entirely produced by man’s interference.

I should expect a more marked analogous case in the vegetable Kingdom—but unfortunately I know little or nothing of that branch. If you think this case of any interest I should very much like to sustain a correspondence on this and similar observations the more so as I am almost isolated here from those of similar tastes.

Hoping you will excuse my boldness | I remain | Sir, | Yours faithfully | William C. Tait.

Via France—

M^r. William C Tait

Oporto

Portugal

Will find me—