My talk with you did me a deal of good, and I enjoyed it much.
LETTER 159. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, January 13th [1863].
I send a very imperfect answer to [your] question, which I have written on foreign paper to save you copying, and you can send when you write to Thomson in Calcutta. Hereafter I shall be able to answer better your question about qualities induced in individuals being inherited; gout in man--loss of wool in sheep (which begins in the first generation and takes two or three to complete); probably obesity (for it is rare with poor); probably obesity and early maturity in short-horn cattle, etc., etc.
LETTER 160. TO A. DE CANDOLLE. Down, January 14th [1863].
I thank you most sincerely for sending me your Memoir. (160/1. Etude sur l'Espece a l'occasion d'une revision de la Famille des Cupuliferes. "Biblioth. Univ. (Arch. des Sc. Phys. et Nat.)," Novembre 1862.) I have read it with the liveliest interest, as is natural for me; but you have the art of making subjects, which might be dry, run easily. I have been fairly astonished at the amount of individual variability in the oaks. I never saw before the subject in any department of nature worked out so carefully. What labour it must have cost you! You spoke in one letter of advancing years; but I am very sure that no one would have suspected that you felt this. I have been interested with every part; though I am so unfortunate as to differ from most of my contemporaries in thinking that the vast continental extensions (160/2. See Letters 47, 48.) of Forbes, Heer, and others are not only advanced without sufficient evidence, but are opposed to much weighty evidence. You refer to my work in the kindest and most generous spirit. I am fully satisfied at the length in belief to which you go, and not at all surprised at the prudent reservations which you make. I remember well how many years it cost me to go round from old beliefs. It is encouraging to me to observe that everyone who has gone an inch with me, after a period goes a few more inches or even feet. But the great point, as it seems to me, is to give up the immutability of specific forms; as long as they are thought immutable, there can be no real progress in "Epiontology." (160/3. See De Candolle, loc. cit., page 67: he defines "Epiontologie" as the study of the distribution and succession of organised beings from their origin up to the present time. At present Epiontology is divided into geography and palaeontology, "mais cette division trop inegale et a limites bien vagues disparaitra probablement.") It matters very little to any one except myself, whether I am a little more or less wrong on this or that point; in fact, I am sure to be proved wrong in many points. But the subject will have, I am convinced, a grand future. Considering that birds are the most isolated group in the animal kingdom, what a splendid case is this Solenhofen bird-creature with its long tail and fingers to its wings! I have lately been daily and hourly using and quoting your "Geographical Botany" in my book on "Variation under Domestication."
LETTER 161. TO HORACE DOBELL. Down, February 16th [1863].
Absence from home and consequent idleness are the causes that I have not sooner thanked you for your very kind present of your Lectures. (161/1. "On the Germs and Vestiges of Disease," (London) 1861.) Your reasoning seems quite satisfactory (though the subject is rather beyond my limit of thought and knowledge) on the V.M.F. not being "a given quantity." (161/2. "It has been too common to consider the force exhibited in the operations of life (the V.M.F.) as a given quantity, to which no accessions can be made, but which is apportioned to each living being in quantity sufficient for its necessities, according to some hidden law" (op. cit., page 41.) And I can see that the conditions of life must play a most important part in allowing this quantity to increase, as in the budding of a tree, etc. How far these conditions act on "the forms of organic life" (page 46) I do not see clearly. In fact, no part of my subject has so completely puzzled me as to determine what effect to attribute to (what I vaguely call) the direct action of the conditions of life. I shall before long come to this subject, and must endeavour to come to some conclusion when I have got the mass of collected facts in some sort of order in my mind. My present impression is that I have underrated this action in the "Origin." I have no doubt when I go through your volume I shall find other points of interest and value to me. I have already stumbled on one case (about which I want to consult Mr. Paget)--namely, on the re-growth of supernumerary digits. (161/3. See Letters 178, 270.) You refer to "White on Regeneration, etc., 1785." I have been to the libraries of the Royal and the Linnean Societies, and to the British Museum, where the librarians got out your volume and made a special hunt, and could discover no trace of such a book. Will you grant me the favour of giving me any clue, where I could see the book? Have you it? if so, and the case is given briefly, would you have the great kindness to copy it? I much want to know all particulars. One case has been given me, but with hardly minute enough details, of a supernumerary little finger which has already been twice cut off, and now the operation will soon have to be done for the third time. I am extremely much obliged for the genealogical table; the fact of the two cousins not, as far as yet appears, transmitting the peculiarity is extraordinary, and must be given by me.
LETTER 162. TO C. LYELL. [February 17th, 1863.]
The same post that brought the enclosed brought Dana's pamphlet on the same subject. (162/1. The pamphlet referred to was published in "Silliman's Journal," Volume XXV., 1863, pages 65 and 71, also in the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," Volume XI., pages 207-14, 1863: "On the Higher Subdivisions in the Classification of Mammals." In this paper Dana maintains the view that "Man's title to a position by himself, separate from the other mammals in classification, appears to be fixed on structural as well as physical grounds" (page 210). His description is as follows:--
I. ARCHONTIA (vel DIPODA) Man (alone).
II. MEGASTHENA. III. MICROSTHENA. Quadrumana. Cheiroptera. Carnivora. Insectivora. Herbivora. Rodentia. Mutilata. Bruta (Edentata).
IV. OOTICOIDEA. Marsupialia. Monotremata.)
The whole seems to me utterly wild. If there had not been the foregone wish to separate men, I can never believe that Dana or any one would have relied on so small a distinction as grown man not using fore-limbs for locomotion, seeing that monkeys use their limbs in all other respects for the same purpose as man. To carry on analogous principles (for they are not identical, in crustacea the cephalic limbs are brought close to mouth) from crustacea to the classification of mammals seems to me madness. Who would dream of making a fundamental distinction in birds, from fore-limbs not being used at all in [some] birds, or used as fins in the penguin, and for flight in other birds?
I get on slowly with your grand work, for I am overwhelmed with odds and ends and letters.
LETTER 163. TO J.D. HOOKER.
(163/1. The following extract refers to Owen's paper in the "Linn. Soc. Journal," June, 1857, in which the classification of the Mammalia by cerebral characters was proposed. In spite of the fact that men and apes are placed in distinct Sub-Classes, Owen speaks (in the foot-note of which Huxley made such telling effect) of the determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus as the anatomist's difficulty. (See Letter 119.))
July 5th, 1857.
What a capital number of the "Linnean Journal!" Owen's is a grand paper; but I cannot swallow Man making a division as distinct from a chimpanzee as an Ornithorhynchus from a horse; I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to this? (163/2. According to Owen the sub-class Archencephala contains only the genus Homo: the Gyrencephala contains both chimpanzee and horse, the Lyencephala contains Ornithorhynchus.)
LETTER 164. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down [February?] 26th, 1863.
I have just finished with very great interest "Man's Place." (164/1. "Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature," 1863 (preface dated January 1863).) I never fail to admire the clearness and condensed vigour of your style, as one calls it, but really of your thought. I have no criticisms; nor is it likely that I could have. But I think you could have added some interesting matter on the character or disposition of the young ourangs which have been kept in France and England. I should have thought you might have enlarged a little on the later embryological changes in man and on his rudimentary structure, tail as compared with tail of higher monkeys, intermaxillary bone, false ribs, and I daresay other points, such as muscles of ears, etc., etc. I was very much struck with admiration at the opening pages of Part II. (and oh! what a delicious sneer, as good as a dessert, at page 106) (164/2. Huxley, op. cit., page 106. After saying that "there is but one hypothesis regarding the origin of species of animals in general which has any scientific existence--that propounded by Mr. Darwin," and after a few words on Lamarck, he goes on: "And though I have heard of the announcement of a formula touching 'the ordained continuous becoming of organic forms,' it is obvious that it is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible, and that a qua-qua-versal proposition of this kind, which may be read backwards or forwards, or sideways, with exactly the same amount of significance, does not really exist, though it may seem to do so." The "formula" in question is Owen's.): but my admiration is unbounded at pages 109 to 112. I declare I never in my life read anything grander. Bacon himself could not have charged a few paragraphs with more condensed and cutting sense than you have done. It is truly grand. I regret extremely that you could not, or did not, end your book (not that I mean to say a word against the Geological History) with these pages. With a book, as with a fine day, one likes it to end with a glorious sunset. I congratulate you on its publication; but do not be disappointed if it does not sell largely: parts are highly scientific, and I have often remarked that the best books frequently do not get soon appreciated: certainly large sale is no proof of the highest merit. But I hope it may be widely distributed; and I am rejoiced to see in your note to Miss Rhadamanthus (164/3. This refers to Mr. Darwin's daughter (now Mrs. Litchfield), whom Mr. Huxley used to laugh at for the severity of her criticisms.) that a second thousand is called for of the little book. What a letter that is of Owen's in the "Athenaeum" (164/4. A letter by Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, replying to strictures on his treatment of the brain question, which had appeared in Lyell's "Antiquity of Man."); how cleverly he will utterly muddle and confound the public. Indeed he quite muddled me, till I read again your "concise statement" (164/5. This refers to a section (pages 113-18) in "Man's Place in Nature," headed "A succinct History of the Controversy respecting the Cerebral Structure of Man and the Apes." Huxley follows the question from Owen's attempt to classify the mammalia by cerebral characters, published by the "Linn. Soc." in 1857, up to his revival of the subject at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1862. It is a tremendous indictment of Owen, and seems to us to conclude not unfittingly with a citation from Huxley's article in the "Medical Times," October 11th, 1862. Huxley here points out that special investigations have been made into the question at issue "during the last two years" by Allen Thomson, Rolleston, Marshall, Flower, Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, and that "all these able and conscientious observers" have testified to the accuracy of his statements, "while not a single anatomist, great or small, has supported Professor Owen." He sums up the case once more, and concludes: "The question has thus become one of personal veracity. For myself I will accept no other issue than this, grave as it is, to the present controversy.") (which is capitally clear), and then I saw that my suspicion was true that he has entirely changed his ground to size of Brain. How candid he shows himself to have taken the slipped Brain! (164/6. Owen in the "Athenaeum," February 21st, 1863, admits that in the brain which he used in illustration of his statements "the cerebral hemispheres had glided forward and apart behind so as to expose a portion of the cerebellum.") I am intensely curious to see whether Lyell will answer. (164/7. Lyell's answer was in the "Athenaeum" March 7th, 1863.) Lyell has been, I fear, rather rash to enter on a subject on which he of course knows nothing by himself. By heavens, Owen will shake himself, when he sees what an antagonist he has made for himself in you. With hearty admiration, Farewell.