From W. B. Dawkins 15 January 1875
The Owens College, | Manchester,
15/1/75
My dear Sir,
In Variation under Domestication 1. 85, you quote from ‘an early record’ the interesting fact that white Cows with red ears stood to the dark cattle as 100 to 150.1 This point as proving the relative size of the two breeds is very important, and as I am unable to get any original authority for it in the early Welsh records I am compelled to ask you to be kind enough to give me the reference. I cannot also light on Youatts authority for the fine of 400 white cattle in the days of King John.2 If, without very much trouble you can help me to these references, I shall be very grateful: for I have been fishing vainly after them for 4 years, and have kept back an essay on the origin of the British Domestic Cattle which ought to have been printed, till I could get them.3
So far as I know the large white domestic cattle were unknown in Britain till the English invasion,4 altho’ they were of Neolithic age on the Continent.
With all good wishes for the year. | I am | My dear Sir | Yours truly | W. Boyd Dawkins
Charles Darwin Es F.R.S.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Dawkins, William Boyd. 1878. A preliminary treatise on the relation of the Pleistocene Mammalia to those now living in Europe. Part A of The British Pleistocene Mammalia, by William Boyd Dawkins. Palaeontographical Society vol. 32. London: Palæontographical Society.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.
Youatt, William. 1834. Cattle: their breeds, management, and diseases. London: Baldwin and Cradock.
Summary
Wants references to facts quoted in Variation for an essay he is writing on origin of British cattle.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9819
- From
- William Boyd Dawkins
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Owens College, Manchester
- Source of text
- DAR 162: 129
- Physical description
- ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9819,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9819.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23