skip to content

Darwin Correspondence Project

To A. R. Wallace   13 January [1873]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan 13th

My dear Wallace

I have read your Review with much interest, & I thank you sincerely for the very kind spirit in which it is written.2 I cannot say that I am convinced by your criticisms. If you have ever actually observed a kitten sucking & pounding, with extended toes, its mother, & then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the same thing on a soft shawl, & ultimately an old cat (as I have seen) & do not admit that it is identically the same action, I am astonished.3

With respect to the decapitated frog, I have always heard of Pflüger as a most trustworthy observer. If indeed anyone knows a frog’s habits so well as to say that it never rubs off a bit of leaf or other object, which may stick to it though, in the same manner as it did the acid, your objection wd. be valid.4 Some of Flouren’s experiments, in which he removed the cerebral anterior hemispheres from a pigeon, indicate that acts, apparently performed consciously, can be done without consciousness,—I presume through the force of habit, in which case it would appear that intellectual power is not brought into play.—5

Several persons have made suggestion & objection as yours about the hands being held up in astonishment: if there was any straining of the muscles, as with protruded arms under fright, I would agree: as it is I must keep to my old opinion, & I daresay you will say that I am an obstinate old blockhead.6

My dear Wallace | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

The Book has sold wonderfully; 9000 copies have now been printed.7

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to Wallace’s review of Expression; the review was published in January 1873.
Wallace’s review of Expression was published in the Quarterly Journal of Science (A. R. Wallace 1873).
See A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116, and Expression, pp. 46–7.
Wallace had doubted CD’s account of a decapitated frog attempting to wipe a drop of acid off its thigh, first with the foot of the same leg, then, when this foot was amputated, with the foot of the other leg. He suggested that the experiment was not correctly recorded, or that if it were, the action could not be reflex since it was one the frog had never needed to use in life, when it had both feet (A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116, Expression, pp. 35–6). Wallace’s objection was recorded in Expression 2d ed., p. 37 n. 10. The experiment was carried out by Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm Pflüger (see, for example, Pflüger 1853, pp. 16–17).
For Marie Jean Pierre Flourens’s experiments on the cerebral localisation, see DSB; for his experiments on pigeons, see Flourens 1824, pp. 29–32.
Wallace suggested that the opening of the arms in the expression of astonishment was connected with an impulse to protect or defend, and was not merely the antithesis of an expression of indifference (A. R. Wallace 1873, p. 116; Expression, pp. 287–8).

Bibliography

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

DSB: Dictionary of scientific biography. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie and Frederic L. Holmes. 18 vols. including index and supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1970–90.

Expression 2d ed.: The expression of the emotions in man and animals. By Charles Darwin. 2d edition. Edited by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray. 1890.

Expression: The expression of the emotions in man and animals. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1872.

Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre. 1824. Recherches experimentales sur les propriétés et les fonctions du système nerveux, dans les animaux vertébrés. Paris: Crevot.

Pflüger, Eduard Friedrich Wilhelm. 1853. Die sensorischen Functionen des Rückenmarks der Wirbelthiere: nebst einer neuen Lehre über die Leitungsgesetze der Reflexionen. Berlin: August Hirschwald.

Summary

Response to ARW’s criticisms in his review [of Expression, Q. J. Sci. n.s. 3 (1873): 113–18].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-8735
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
Alfred Russel Wallace
Sent from
Down
Source of text
The British Library (Add MS 46434)
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8735,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8735.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21

letter