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From C. C. Blake   20 February 1871

46 Devonshire Street | Queens Square W. C.

February 20th 1871

My Dear Sir.

I have just received with great pleasure a copy of your work, which I shall of course not criticise in the Medico Chirurgical Review till I have carefully read it.1 Thank you much for your kind notice of me.2

I have been led to corroborate your observations ii. 380. by my own experience of the Mosquito Indians.3 There is not even tradition of the natives having practised artifical compression of the skull, yet a distinct artifical compression is visible. The children are not swaddled, nor cradled. I think that Gosse may have been right after all.4

You may be assured that in my review, I shall have no other object than fiat justicia ruat cœlum,5 & if I have to modify some of my previously published opinions, the shame will merely attach to myself.6

I should be tempted to extend this letter, but I know just now that you must be overwhelmed with congratulations.

Yours very sincerely | C. Carter Blake

C. Darwin Esq FRS

Footnotes

1
Blake refers to Descent. See letter to R. F. Cooke, 12 January [1871]. An anonymous review of Descent and Mivart 1871a was published in the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review n.s. 48 (1871): 285–309.
2
CD cited Blake in Descent 1: 26 n. 31 and 126 n. 42 in discussions of teeth.
3
In Descent 2: 380 n. 23, CD mentioned the belief of Louis-André Gosse that artificial modifications of the skull tended to be inherited. The Miskito are a group of Native Americans living in Honduras and Nicaragua. Blake visited their territory in 1867 (Journal of the Anthropological Society of London 6 (1868): xv).
4
Gosse had discussed cranial deformation in, for example, Gosse 1855.
5
Fiat justicia, ruat coelum: let justice be done, though the heavens fall (Latin).
6
See letter to R. F. Cooke, 12 January [1871] and n. 6. Blake had been a member of the Anthropological Society, which had been opposed to CD’s theory of natural selection (see Correspondence vol. 11, letter to J. D. Hooker, 15 and 22 May [1863] and n. 12).

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.

Gosse, Louis-André. 1855. Essai sur les deformations artificielles du crâne. Annales d’hygiène publique et de médicine légale 2d ser. 3: 317–93.

Summary

Has just received copy of CD’s work [Descent].

Can corroborate artificial compression of skull practised by Indians.

May have to modify his earlier published opinions on CD’s views.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-7495
From
Charles Carter Blake
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Devonshire St, 46
Source of text
DAR 160: 199
Physical description
ALS 2pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7495,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7495.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19

letter

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