More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I Part 39

With cordial good wishes for your success in all your work and for your happiness.

LETTER 249. TO E. RAY LANKESTER. Down, April 15th [1872].

Very many thanks for your kind consideration. The correspondence was in the "Athenaeum." I got some mathematician to make the calculation, and he blundered and caused me much shame. I send sc.r.a.p of proofs from last edition of the "Origin," with the calculation corrected. What grand work you did at Naples! I can clearly see that you will some day become our first star in Natural History.

(249/1. Here follows the extract from the "Origin," sixth edition, page 51: "The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase. It will be safest to a.s.sume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years, there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair." In the fifth edition, page 75, the pa.s.sage runs: "If this be so, at the end of the fifth century, there would be alive fifteen million elephants, descended from the first pair" (see "Athenaeum," June 5, July 3, 17, 24, 1869).)

LETTER 250. TO C. LYELL. Down, May 10th [1872].

I received yesterday morning your present of that work to which I, for one, as well as so many others, owe a debt of grat.i.tude never to be forgotten. I have read with the greatest interest all the special additions; and I wish with all my heart that I had the strength and time to read again every word of the whole book. (250/1. "Principles of Geology," Edition XII., 1875.) I do not agree with all your criticisms on Natural Selection, nor do I suppose that you would expect me to do so. We must be content to differ on several points. I differ must about your difficulty (page 496) (250/2. In Chapter XLIII. Lyell treats of "Man considered with reference to his Origin and Geographical Distribution." He criticizes the view that Natural Selection is capable of bringing about any amount of change provided a series of minute transitional steps can be pointed out. "But in reality," he writes, "it cannot be said that we obtain any insight into the nature of the forces by which a higher grade of organisation or instinct is evolved out of a lower one by becoming acquainted with a series of gradational forms or states, each having a very close affinity with the other."..."It is when there is a change from an inferior being to one of superior grade, from a humbler organism to one endowed with new and more exalted attributes, that we are made to feel that, to explain the difficulty, we must obtain some knowledge of those laws of variation of which Mr. Darwin grants that we are at present profoundly ignorant" (op. cit., pages 496-97).) on a higher grade of organisation being evolved out of lower ones. Is not a very clever man a grade above a very dull one? and would not the acc.u.mulation of a large number of slight differences of this kind lead to a great difference in the grade of organisation? And I suppose that you will admit that the difference in the brain of a clever and dull man is not much more wonderful than the difference in the length of the nose of any two men. Of course, there remains the impossibility of explaining at present why one man has a longer nose than another. But it is foolish of me to trouble you with these remarks, which have probably often pa.s.sed through your mind. The end of this chapter (XLIII.) strikes me as admirably and grandly written. I wish you joy at having completed your gigantic undertaking, and remain, my dear Lyell,

Your ever faithful and now very old pupil, CHARLES DARWIN.

LETTER 251. TO J. TRAHERNE MOGGRIDGE. Sevenoaks, October 9th [1872].

I have just received your note, forwarded to me from my home. I thank you very truly for your intended present, and I am sure that your book will interest me greatly. I am delighted that you have taken up the very difficult and most interesting subject of the habits of insects, on which Englishmen have done so little. How incomparably more valuable are such researches than the mere description of a thousand species! I daresay you have thought of experimenting on the mental powers of the spiders by fixing their trap-doors open in different ways and at different angles, and observing what they will do.

We have been here some days, and intend staying some weeks; for I was quite worn out with work, and cannot be idle at home.

I sincerely hope that your health is not worse.

LETTER 252. TO A. HYATT.

(252/1. The correspondence with Professor Hyatt, of Boston, U.S., originated in the reference to his and Professor Cope's theories of acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation, inserted in the sixth edition of the "Origin," page 149.

Mr. Darwin, on receiving from Mr. Hyatt a copy of his "Fossil Cephalopods of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Embryology," from the "Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool." Harvard, Volume III., 1872, wrote as follows (252/2. Part of this letter was published in "Life and Letters," III., page 154.):--)

October 10th, 1872.

I am very much obliged to you for your kindness in having sent me your valuable memoir on the embryology of the extinct cephalopods. The work must have been one of immense labour, and the results are extremely interesting. Permit me to take this opportunity to express my sincere regret at having committed two grave errors in the last edition of my "Origin of Species," in my allusion to yours and Professor Cope's views on acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation of development. I had thought that Professor Cope had preceded you; but I now well remember having formerly read with lively interest, and marked, a paper by you somewhere in my library, on fossil cephalopods, with remarks on the subject. (252/3. The paper seems to be "On the Parallelism between the Different Stages of Life in the Individual and those in the Entire Group of the Molluscous Order Tetrabranchiata," from the "Boston. Soc. Nat. Hist. Mem." I., 1866-69, page 193. On the back of the paper is written, "I cannot avoid thinking this paper fanciful.") It seems also that I have quite misrepresented your joint view; this has vexed me much. I confess that I have never been able to grasp fully what you wish to show, and I presume that this must be owing to some dulness on my part...As the case stands, the law of acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation seems to me to be a simple [?]

statement of facts; but the statement, if fully established, would no doubt be an important step in our knowledge. But I had better say nothing more on the subject, otherwise I shall perhaps blunder again.

I a.s.sure you that I regret much that I have fallen into two such grave errors.

LETTER 253. A. HYATT TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(253/1. Mr. Hyatt replied in a long letter, of which only a small part is here given.

Cannstadt bei Stuttgart, November 1872.

The letter with which you have honoured me, bearing the date of October 10th, has just reached here after a voyage to America and back.

I have long had it in mind to write you upon the subject of which you speak, but have been prevented by a very natural feeling of distrust in the worthiness and truth of the views which I had to present.

There is certainly no occasion to apologise for not having quoted my paper. The law of acceleration and r.e.t.a.r.dation of development was therein used to explain the appearance of other phenomena, and might, as it did in nearly all cases, easily escape notice.

My relations with Prof. Cope are of the most friendly character; and although fortunate in publishing a few months ahead, I consider that this gives me no right to claim anything beyond such an amount of partic.i.p.ation in the discovery, if it may be so called, as the thoroughness and worth of my work ent.i.tles me to...

The collections which I have studied, it will be remembered, are fossils collected without special reference to the very minute subdivisions, such as the subdivisions of the Lower or Middle Lias as made by the German authors, especially Quenstedt and Oppel, but pretty well defined for the larger divisions in which the species are also well defined.

The condition of the collections as regards names, etc., was chaotic, localities alone, with some few exceptions, accurate. To put this in order they were first arranged according to their adult characteristics.

This proving unsatisfactory, I determined to test thoroughly the theory of evolution by following out the developmental history of each species and placing them within their formations, Middle or Upper Lias, Oolite or so, according to the extent to which they represented each other's characteristics. Thus an adult of simple structure being taken as the starting-point which we will call a, another species which was a in its young stage and became b in the adult was placed above it in the zoological series. By this process I presently found that a, then a b and a b c, c representing the adult stage, were very often found; but that practically after pa.s.sing these two or three stages it did not often happen that a species was found which was a b c in the young and then became d in the adult. But on the other hand I very frequently found one which, while it was a in the young, skipped the stages b and c and became d while still quite young. Then sometimes, though more rarely, a species would be found belonging to the same series, which would be a in the young and with a very faint and fleeting resemblance to d at a later stage, pa.s.s immediately while still quite young to the more advanced characteristics represented by e, and hold these as its specific characteristics until old age destroyed them. This skipping is the highest exemplification, or rather manifestation, of acceleration in development. In alluding to the history of diseases and inheritance of characteristics, you in your "Origin of Species" allude to the ordinary manifestation of acceleration, when you speak of the tendency of diseases or characteristics to appear at younger periods in the life of the child than of its parents. This, according to my observations, is a law, or rather mode, of development, which is applicable to all characteristics, and in this way it is possible to explain why the young of later-occurring animals are like the adult stages of those which preceded them in time. If I am not mistaken you have intimated something of this sort also in your first edition, but I have not been able to find it lately. Of course this is a very normal condition of affairs when a series can be followed in this way, beginning with species a, then going through species a b to a b c, then a b d or a c d, and then a d e or simply a e, as it sometimes comes. Very often the acceleration takes place in two closely connected series, thus:

a--ab--abd--ae---ad

in which one series goes on very regularly, while another lateral offshoot of a becomes d in the adult. This is an actual case which can be plainly shown with the specimens in hand, and has been verified in the collections here. r.e.t.a.r.dation is entirely Prof. Cope's idea, but I think also easily traceable. It is the opponent of acceleration, so to speak, or the opposite or negative of that mode of development. Thus series may occur in which, either in size or characteristics, they return to former characteristics; but a better discussion of this point you will find in the little treatise which I send by the same mail as this letter, "On Reversions among the Ammonites."

LETTER 254. TO A. HYATT. Down, December 4th, 1872.

I thank you sincerely for your most interesting letter. You refer much too modestly to your own knowledge and judgment, as you are much better fitted to throw light on your own difficult problems than I am.

It has quite annoyed me that I do not clearly understand yours and Prof.

Cope's views (254/1. Prof. Cope's views may be gathered from his "Origin of the Fittest" 1887; in this book (page 41) is reprinted his "Origin of Genera" from the "Proc. Philadelph. Acad. Nat. Soc." 1868, which was published separately by the author in 1869, and which we believe to be his first publication on the subject. In the preface to the "Origin of the Fittest," page vi, he sums up the chief points in the "Origin of Genera" under seven heads, of which the following are the most important:--"First, that development of new characters has been accomplished by an ACCELERATION or r.e.t.a.r.dATION in the growth of the parts changed...Second, that of EXACT PARALLELISM between the adult of one individual or set of individuals, and a transitional stage of one or more other individuals. This doctrine is distinct from that of an exact parallelism, which had already been stated by von Baer." The last point is less definitely stated by Hyatt in his letter of December 4th, 1872.

"I am thus perpetually led to look upon a series very much as upon an individual, and think that I have found that in many instances these afford parallel changes." See also "Lamarck the Founder of Evolution, by A.S. Packard: New York, 1901.) and the fault lies in some slight degree, I think, with Prof. Cope, who does not write very clearly. I think I now understand the terms "acceleration" and "r.e.t.a.r.dation"; but will you grudge the trouble of telling me, by the aid of the following ill.u.s.tration, whether I do understand rightly? When a fresh-water decapod crustacean is born with an almost mature structure, and therefore does not pa.s.s, like other decapods, through the Zoea stage, is this not a case of acceleration? Again, if an imaginary decapod retained, when adult, many Zoea characters, would this not be a case of r.e.t.a.r.dation? If these ill.u.s.trations are correct, I can perceive why I have been so dull in understanding your views. I looked for something else, being familiar with such cases, and cla.s.sing them in my own mind as simply due to the obliteration of certain larval or embryonic stages.

This obliteration I imagined resulted sometimes entirely from that law of inheritance to which you allude; but that it in many cases was aided by Natural Selection, as I inferred from such cases occurring so frequently in terrestrial and fresh-water members of groups, which retain their several embryonic stages in the sea, as long as fitting conditions are present.

Another cause of my misunderstanding was the a.s.sumption that in your series

a--ab--abd--ae,--------ad

the differences between the successive species, expressed by the terminal letter, was due to acceleration: now, if I understand rightly, this is not the case; and such characters must have been independently acquired by some means.

The two newest and most interesting points in your letter (and in, as far as I think, your former paper) seem to me to be about senile characteristics in one species appearing in succeeding species during maturity; and secondly about certain degraded characters appearing in the last species of a series. You ask for my opinion: I can only send the conjectured impressions which have occurred to me and which are not worth writing. (It ought to be known whether the senile character appears before or after the period of active reproduction.) I should be inclined to attribute the character in both your cases to the laws of growth and descent, secondarily to Natural Selection. It has been an error on my part, and a misfortune to me, that I did not largely discuss what I mean by laws of growth at an early period in some of my books. I have said something on this head in two new chapters in the last edition of the "Origin." I should be happy to send you a copy of this edition, if you do not possess it and care to have it. A man in extreme old age differs much from a young man, and I presume every one would account for this by failing powers of growth. On the other hand the skulls of some mammals go on altering during maturity into advancing years; as do the horns of the stag, the tail-feathers of some birds, the size of fishes etc.; and all such differences I should attribute simply to the laws of growth, as long as full vigour was retained. Endless other changes of structure in successive species may, I believe, be accounted for by various complex laws of growth. Now, any change of character thus induced with advancing years in the individual might easily be inherited at an earlier age than that at which it first supervened, and thus become characteristic of the mature species; or again, such changes would be apt to follow from variation, independently of inheritance, under proper conditions. Therefore I should expect that characters of this kind would often appear in later-formed species without the aid of Natural Selection, or with its aid if the characters were of any advantage. The longer I live, the more I become convinced how ignorant we are of the extent to which all sorts of structures are serviceable to each species. But that characters supervening during maturity in one species should appear so regularly, as you state to be the case, in succeeding species, seems to me very surprising and inexplicable.

With respect to degradation in species towards the close of a series, I have nothing to say, except that before I arrived at the end of your letter, it occurred to me that the earlier and simpler ammonites must have been well adapted to their conditions, and that when the species were verging towards extinction (owing probably to the presence of some more successful compet.i.tors) they would naturally become re-adapted to simpler conditions. Before I had read your final remarks I thought also that unfavourable conditions might cause, through the law of growth, aided perhaps by reversion, degradation of character. No doubt many new laws remain to be discovered. Permit me to add that I have never been so foolish as to imagine that I have succeeded in doing more than to lay down some of the broad outlines of the origin of species.

After long reflection I cannot avoid the conviction that no innate tendency to progressive development exists, as is now held by so many able naturalists, and perhaps by yourself. It is curious how seldom writers define what they mean by progressive development; but this is a point which I have briefly discussed in the "Origin." I earnestly hope that you may visit Hilgendorf's famous deposit. Have you seen Weismann's pamphlet "Einfluss der Isolirung," Leipzig, 1872? He makes splendid use of Hilgendorf's admirable observations. (254/2. Hilgendorf, "Monatsb.

K. Akad." Berlin, 1866. For a semi-popular account of Hilgendorf's and Hyatt's work on this subject, see Romanes' "Darwin and after Darwin,"

I., page 201.) I have no strength to spare, being much out of health; otherwise I would have endeavoured to have made this letter better worth sending. I most sincerely wish you success in your valuable and difficult researches.

I have received, and thank you, for your three pamphlets. As far as I can judge, your views seem very probable; but what a fearfully intricate subject is this of the succession of ammonites. (254/3. See various papers in the publications of the "Boston Soc. Nat. Hist." and in the "Bulletin of the Harvard Museum of Comp. Zoology.")

LETTER 255. A. HYATT TO CHARLES DARWIN. Cannstadt bei Stuttgart, December 8th, 1872.

The quickness and earnestness of your reply to my letter gives me the greatest encouragement, and I am much delighted at the unexpected interest which your questions and comments display. What you say about Prof. Cope's style has been often before said to me, and I have remarked in his writings an unsatisfactory treatment of our common theory. This, I think, perhaps is largely due to the complete absorption of his mind in the contemplation of his subject: this seems to lead him to be careless about the methods in which it may be best explained. He has, however, a more extended knowledge than I have, and has in many ways a more powerful grasp of the subject, and for that very reason, perhaps, is liable to run into extremes. You ask about the skipping of the Zoea stage in fresh-water decapods: is this an ill.u.s.tration of acceleration?

It most a.s.suredly is, if acceleration means anything at all. Again, another and more general ill.u.s.tration would be, if, among the marine decapods, a series could be formed in which the Zoea stage became less and less important in the development, and was relegated to younger and younger stages of the development, and finally disappeared in those to which you refer. This is the usual way in which the accelerated mode of development manifests itself; though near the lowest or earliest occurring species it is also to be looked for. Perhaps this to which you allude is an ill.u.s.tration somewhat similar to the one which I have spoken of in my series,

a--ab--abc--ae--------ad,

which like "a d" comes from the earliest of a series, though I should think from the entire skipping of the Zoea stage that it must be, like "a e," the result of a long line of ancestors. In fact, the essential point of our theory is, that characteristics are ever inherited by the young at earlier periods than they are a.s.sumed in due course of growth by the parents, and that this must eventually lead to the extinction or skipping of these characteristics altogether...

Such considerations as these and the fact that near the heads of series or near the latest members of series, and not at the beginning, were usually found the accelerated types, which skipped lower characteristics and developed very suddenly to a higher and more complex standpoint in structure, led both Cope and [myself] into what may be a great error. I see that it has led you at least into the difficulty of which you very rightly complain, and which, I am sorry to see, has cost you some of your valuable time. We presumed that because characteristics were perpetually inherited at earlier stages, that this very concentration of the developed characteristics made room for the production of differences in the adult descendants of any given pair. Further, that in the room thus made other different characteristics must be produced, and that these would necessarily appear earlier in proportion as the species was more or less accelerated, and be greater or less in the same proportion. Finally, that in the most accelerated, such as "a c" or "a d," the difference would be so great as to const.i.tute distinct genera.

Cope and I have differed very much, while he acknowledged the action of the acc.u.mulated mode of development only when generic characteristics or greater differences were produced, I saw the same mode of development to be applicable in all cases and to all characteristics, even to diseases.

So far the facts bore us out, but when we a.s.sumed that the adult differences were the result of the accelerated mode of development, we were perhaps upon rather insecure ground. It is evidently this a.s.sumption which has led you to misunderstand the theory. Cope founded his belief, that the adult characteristics were also the result of acceleration, if I rightly remember it, mainly upon the cla.s.s of facts spoken of above in man where a sudden change into two organs may produce entirely new and unexpected differences in the whole organisation, and upon the changes which acceleration appeared to produce in the development of each succeeding species. Your difficulty in understanding the theory and the observations you have made show me at once what my own difficulties have been, but of these I will not speak at present, as my letter is spinning itself out to a fearful length.