From Charles Lyell 8 September 1860
Summary
Believes CD’s argument against special creation based on absence of terrestrial mammals on islands isolated before Pliocene era is very strong. However, the absence means Cetacea and bats have not modified towards terrestrial existence. There is similar lack of development of bats and rodents in Australia. Constancy among land shells of Madeira over long period shows that the majority of their species are immutable: a minority of "metamorphic" species maintains the overall number of true species while extinction removes many. Emphasis on the role of extinction discomfits CD’s opponents since the power of generation of new species ought to keep pace. Mentions Ammonite deposits with reference to CD’s comments on their apparent sudden extinction [Origin, pp. 321–2]. Perhaps absence of transmutation on slowly subsiding atolls indicates the slow rate of selective change.
| Author: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
| Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Date: | 8 Sept 1860 |
| Classmark: | The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/6: 179–86) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-2908A |
Matches: 1 hit
- … C. Darwin 8 th Sept r . 1860— Coburg’. See letter to Charles Lyell, 1 September [1860] . Alfred Russel Wallace referred to the original form from which a variety or new species developed as the ‘antitype’ (see Darwin and Wallace 1858, p. 61, and Wallace 1860 , p. 181). Lissencephala, in Richard Owen’ …
To Thomas Spring Rice [before 7 July 1838]
Summary
Express their concern that the offer for sale to the British Museum, by G. A. Mantell and Thomas Hawkins, of two valuable collections, has been declined.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin; William Buckland; Adam Sedgwick; John Phillips; William Whewell; Roderick Impey Murchison, 1st baronet; Charles Lyell, 1st baronet; Charles Stokes; William John Hamilton; Edward Stanley; Richard Owen; William Clift; Charles Babbage; John Bostock; Peter Mark Roget; John Taylor; Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, 2d Marquess of Northampton; William John Broderip |
| Addressee: | Thomas Spring Rice |
| Date: | [before 7 July 1838] |
| Classmark: | House of Commons papers; accounts and papers, 1837/38, XXXVI, 307 |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-421F |
| letter | (2) |
| Lyell, Charles | (2) |
| Babbage, Charles | (1) |
| Bostock, John | (1) |
| Broderip, W. J. | (1) |
| Buckland, William | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (1) |
| Spring Rice, Thomas | (1) |
| Darwin, C. R. | (2) |
| Lyell, Charles | |
| Babbage, Charles | (1) |
| Bostock, John | (1) |
| Broderip, W. J. | (1) |
| Buckland, William | (1) |
| Clift, William | (1) |
| Compton, S. J. A. | (1) |
| Hamilton, W. J. | (1) |
| Murchison, R. I. | (1) |
| Owen, Richard | (1) |
| Phillips, John | (1) |
| Roget, P. M. | (1) |
| Sedgwick, Adam | (1) |
| Spring Rice, Thomas | (1) |
| Stanley, Edward | (1) |
| Stokes, Charles | (1) |
| Taylor, John | (1) |
| Whewell, William | (1) |
