Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Volume I Part 36

I forget whether I ever told you what the object of my present work is,--it is to view all facts that I can master (eheu, eheu, how ignorant I find I am) in Natural History (as on geographical distribution, palaeontology, cla.s.sification, hybridism, domestic animals and plants, etc., etc., etc.) to see how far they favour or are opposed to the notion that wild species are mutable or immutable: I mean with my utmost power to give all arguments and facts on both sides. I have a NUMBER of people helping me in every way, and giving me most valuable a.s.sistance; but I often doubt whether the subject will not quite overpower me.

So much for the quasi-business part of my letter. I am very very sorry to hear so indifferent account of your health: with your large family your life is very precious, and I am sure with all your activity and goodness it ought to be a happy one, or as happy as can reasonably be expected with all the cares of futurity on one.

One cannot expect the present to be like the old Crux-major days at the foot of those n.o.ble willow stumps, the memory of which I revere. I now find my little entomology which I wholly owe to you, comes in very useful. I am very glad to hear that you have given yourself a rest from Sunday duties. How much illness you have had in your life! Farewell my dear Fox. I a.s.sure you I thank you heartily for your proffered a.s.sistance.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 7th [1855].

My dear Fox,

My correspondence has cost you a deal of trouble, though this note will not. I found yours on my return home on Sat.u.r.day after a week's work in London. Whilst there I saw Yarrell, who told me he had carefully examined all points in the Call Duck, and did not feel any doubt about it being specifically identical, and that it had crossed freely with common varieties in St. James's Park. I should therefore be very glad for a seven-days' duckling and for one of the old birds, should one ever die a natural death. Yarrell told me that Sabine had collected forty varieties of the common duck!...Well, to return to business; n.o.body, I am sure, could fix better for me than you the characteristic age of little chickens; with respect to skeletons, I have feared it would be impossible to make them, but I suppose I shall be able to measure limbs, etc., by feeling the joints. What you say about old c.o.c.ks just confirms what I thought, and I will make my skeletons of old c.o.c.ks. Should an old wild turkey ever die, please remember me; I do not care for a baby turkey, nor for a mastiff. Very many thanks for your offer. I have puppies of bull-dogs and greyhound in salt, and I have had cart-horse and race-horse young colts carefully measured. Whether I shall do any good I doubt. I am getting out of my depth.

Most truly yours, C. DARWIN.

[An extract from a letter to Mr. Fox may find a place here, though of a later date, viz. July, 1855]:

"Many thanks for the seven days' old white Dorking, and for the other promised ones. I am getting quite a 'chamber of horrors,' I appreciate your kindness even more than before; for I have done the black deed and murdered an angelic little fantail and pouter at ten days old. I tried chloroform and ether for the first, and though evidently a perfectly easy death, it was prolonged; and for the second I tried putting lumps of cyanide of pota.s.sium in a very large damp bottle, half an hour before putting in the pigeon, and the prussic acid gas thus generated was very quickly fatal."

A letter to Mr. Fox (May 23rd, 1855) gives the first mention of my father's laborious piece of work on the breeding of pigeons:

"I write now to say that I have been looking at some of our mongrel chickens, and I should say ONE WEEK OLD would do very well. The chief points which I am, and have been for years, very curious about, is to ascertain whether the YOUNG of our domestic breeds differ as much from each other as do their parents, and I have no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the Rule of Three. I hope and believe I am not giving so much trouble without a motive of sufficient worth. I have got my fantails and pouters (choice birds, I hope, as I paid 20 s.h.i.+llings for each pair from Baily) in a grand cage and pigeon-house, and they are a decided amus.e.m.e.nt to me, and delight to H."

In the course of my father's pigeon-fancying enterprise he necessarily became acquainted with breeders, and was fond of relating his experiences as a member of the Columbarian and Philoperistera Clubs, where he met the purest enthusiasts of the "fancy," and learnt much of the mysteries of their art. In writing to Mr. Huxley some years afterwards, he quotes from a book on 'Pigeons' by Mr. J. Eaton, in ill.u.s.tration of the "extreme attention and close observation" necessary to be a good fancier.

"In his [Mr. Eaton's] treatise, devoted to the Almond Tumbler ALONE, which is a sub-variety of the short-faced variety, which is a variety of the Tumbler, as that is of the Rock-pigeon, Mr. Eaton says: 'There are some of the young fanciers who are over-covetous, who go for all the five properties at once [i.e., the five characteristic points which are mainly attended to,--C.D.], they have their reward by getting nothing.'

In short, it is almost beyond the human intellect to attend to ALL the excellencies of the Almond Tumbler!

"To be a good breeder, and to succeed in improving any breed, beyond everything enthusiasm is required. Mr. Eaton has gained lots of prizes, listen to him.

"'If it was possible for n.o.blemen and gentlemen to know the amazing amount of solace and pleasure derived from the Almond Tumbler, when they begin to understand their (i.e., the tumbler's) properties, I should think that scarce any n.o.bleman or gentleman would be without their aviaries of Almond Tumblers.'"

My father was fond of quoting this pa.s.sage, and always with a tone of fellow-feeling for the author, though, no doubt, he had forgotten his own wonderings as a child that "every gentleman did not become an ornithologist."--('Autobiography,' page 32.)

To Mr. W.B. Tegetmeier, the well-known writer on poultry, etc., he was indebted for constant advice and co-operation. Their correspondence began in 1855, and lasted to 1881, when my father wrote: "I can a.s.sure you that I often look back with pleasure to the old days when I attended to pigeons, fowls, etc., and when you gave me such valuable a.s.sistance.

I not rarely regret that I have had so little strength that I have not been able to keep up old acquaintances and friends.h.i.+ps." My father's letters to Mr. Tegetmeier consist almost entirely of series of questions relating to the different breeds of fowls, pigeons, etc., and are not, therefore interesting. In reading through the pile of letters, one is much struck by the diligence of the writer's search for facts, and it is made clear that Mr. Tegetmeier's knowledge and judgment were completely trusted and highly valued by him. Numerous phrases, such as "your note is a mine of wealth to me," occur, expressing his sense of the value of Mr. Tegetmeier's help, as well as words expressing his warm appreciation of Mr. Tegetmeier's unstinting zeal and kindness, or his "pure and disinterested love of science." On the subject of hive-bees and their combs, Mr. Tegetmeier's help was also valued by my father, who wrote, "your paper on 'Bees-cells,' read before the British a.s.sociation, was highly useful and suggestive to me."

To work out the problems on the Geographical Distributions of animals and plants on evolutionary principles, he had to study the means by which seeds, eggs, etc., can be transported across wide s.p.a.ces of ocean.

It was this need which gave an interest to the cla.s.s of experiment to which the following letters allude.]

CHARLES DARWIN TO W.D. FOX. Down, May 17th [1855].

My dear Fox,

You will hate the very sight of my hand-writing; but after this time I promise I will ask for nothing more, at least for a long time. As you live on sandy soil, have you lizards at all common? If you have, should you think it too ridiculous to offer a reward for me for lizard's eggs to the boys in your school; a s.h.i.+lling for every half-dozen, or more if rare, till you got two or three dozen and send them to me? If snake's eggs were brought in mistake it would be very well, for I want such also; and we have neither lizards nor snakes about here. My object is to see whether such eggs will float on sea water, and whether they will keep alive thus floating for a month or two in my cellar. I am trying experiments on transportation of all organic beings that I can; and lizards are found on every island, and therefore I am very anxious to see whether their eggs stand sea water. Of course this note need not be answered, without, by a strange and favourable chance, you can some day answer it with the eggs.

Your most troublesome friend, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. April 13th [1855].

...I have had one experiment some little time in progress, which will, I think, be interesting, namely, seeds in salt water immersed in water of 32-33 degrees, which I have and shall long have, as I filled a great tank with snow. When I wrote last I was going to triumph over you, for my experiment had in a slight degree succeeded; but this, with infinite baseness, I did not tell, in hopes that you would say that you would eat all the plants which I could raise after immersion. It is very aggravating that I cannot in the least remember what you did formerly say that made me think you scoffed at the experiments vastly; for you now seem to view the experiment like a good Christian. I have in small bottles out of doors, exposed to variation of temperature, cress, radish, cabbages, lettuces, carrots, and celery, and onion seed--four great families. These, after immersion for exactly one week, have all germinated, which I did not in the least expect (and thought how you would sneer at me); for the water of nearly all, and of the cress especially, smelt very badly, and the cress seed emitted a wonderful quant.i.ty of mucus (the 'Vestiges' would have expected them to turn into tadpoles), so as to adhere in a ma.s.s; but these seeds germinated and grew splendidly. The germination of all (especially cress and lettuces) has been accelerated, except the cabbages, which have come up very irregularly, and a good many, I think, dead. One would have thought, from their native habitat, that the cabbage would have stood well. The Umbelliferae and onions seem to stand the salt well. I wash the seed before planting them. I have written to the "Gardeners' Chronicle" (A few words asking for information. The results were published in the 'Gardeners' Chronicle,' May 26, November 24, 1855. In the same year (page 789) he sent a P.S. to his former paper, correcting a misprint and adding a few words on the seeds of the Leguminosae. A fuller paper on the germination of seeds after treatment in salt water, appeared in the 'Linnaean Soc. Journal,' 1857, page 130.), though I doubt whether it was worth while. If my success seems to make it worth while, I will send a seed list, to get you to mark some different cla.s.ses of seeds. To-day I replant the same seeds as above after fourteen days' immersion. As many sea-currents go a mile an hour, even in a week they might be transported 168 miles; the Gulf Stream is said to go fifty and sixty miles a day. So much and too much on this head; but my geese are always swans...

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [April 14th, 1855.]

...You are a good man to confess that you expected the cress would be killed in a week, for this gives me a nice little triumph. The children at first were tremendously eager, and asked me often, "whether I should beat Dr. Hooker!" The cress and lettuce have just vegetated well after twenty-one days' immersion. But I will write no more, which is a great virtue in me; for it is to me a very great pleasure telling you everything I do.

...If you knew some of the experiments (if they may be so-called) which I am trying, you would have a good right to sneer, for they are so ABSURD even in MY opinion that I dare not tell you.

Have not some men a nice notion of experimentising? I have had a letter telling me that seeds MUST have GREAT power of resisting salt water, for otherwise how could they get to islands? This is the true way to solve a problem!

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [1855].

My dear Hooker,

You have been a very good man to exhale some of your satisfaction in writing two notes to me; you could not have taken a better line in my opinion; but as for showing your satisfaction in confounding my experiments, I a.s.sure you I am quite enough confounded--those horrid seeds, which, as you truly observe, if they sink they won't float.

I have written to Scoresby and have had a rather dry answer, but very much to the purpose, and giving me no hopes of any law unknown to me which might arrest their everlasting descent into the deepest depths of the ocean. By the way it was very odd, but I talked to Col. Sabine for half an hour on the subject, and could not make him see with respect to transportal the difficulty of the sinking question! The bore is, if the confounded seeds will sink, I have been taking all this trouble in salting the ungrateful rascals for nothing.

Everything has been going wrong with me lately; the fish at the Zoological Society ate up lots of soaked seeds, and in imagination they had in my mind been swallowed, fish and all, by a heron, had been carried a hundred miles, been voided on the banks of some other lake and germinated splendidly, when lo and behold, the fish ejected vehemently, and with disgust equal to my own, ALL the seeds from their mouths. (In describing these troubles to Mr. Fox, my father wrote:--"All nature is perverse and will not do as I wish it; and just at present I wish I had my old barnacles to work at, and nothing new." The experiment ultimately succeeded, and he wrote to Sir J. Hooker:--"I find fish will greedily eat seeds of aquatic gra.s.ses, and that millet-seed put into fish and given to a stork, and then voided, will germinate. So this is the nursery rhyme of 'this is the stick that beats the pig,' etc., etc.,")

But I am not going to give up the floating yet: in first place I must try fresh seeds, though of course it seems far more probable that they will sink; and secondly, as a last resource, I must believe in the pod or even whole plant or branch being washed into the sea; with floods and slips and earthquakes; this must continually be happening, and if kept wet, I fancy the pods, etc. etc., would not open and shed their seeds.

Do try your Mimosa seed at Kew.

I had intended to have asked you whether the Mimosa scandens and Guilandina bonduc grows at Kew, to try fresh seeds. R. Brown tells me he believes four W. Indian seeds have been washed on sh.o.r.es of Europe.

I was a.s.sured at Keeling Island that seeds were not rarely washed on sh.o.r.e: so float they must and shall! What a long yarn I have been spinning.

If you have several of the Loffoden seeds, do soak some in tepid water, and get planted with the utmost care: this is an experiment after my own heart, with chances 1000 to 1 against its success.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. Down, May 11th [1855].

My dear Hooker,--I have just received your note. I am most sincerely and heartily glad at the news (The appointment of Sir J.D. Hooker as a.s.sistant Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew.) it contains, and so is my wife. Though the income is but a poor one, yet the certainty, I hope, is satisfactory to yourself and Mrs. Hooker. As it must lead in future years to the Directors.h.i.+p, I do hope you look at it, as a piece of good fortune. For my own taste I cannot fancy a pleasanter position, than the Head of such a n.o.ble and splendid place; far better, I should think, than a Professors.h.i.+p in a great town. The more I think of it, the gladder I am. But I will say no more; except that I hope Mrs. Hooker is pretty well pleased...

As the "Gardeners' Chronicle" put in my question, and took notice of it, I think I am bound to send, which I had thought of doing next week, my first report to Lindley to give him the option of inserting it; but I think it likely that he may not think it fit for a Gardening periodical.

When my experiments are ended (should the results appear worthy) and should the 'Linnean Journal' not object to the previous publication of imperfect and provisional reports, I should be DELIGHTED to insert the final report there; for it has cost me so much trouble, that I should think that probably the result was worthy of more permanent record than a newspaper; but I think I am bound to send it first to Lindley.

I begin to think the floating question more serious than the germinating one; and am making all the inquiries which I can on the subject, and hope to get some little light on it...

I hope you managed a good meeting at the Club. The Treasurers.h.i.+p must be a plague to you, and I hope you will not be Treasurer for long: I know I would much sooner give up the Club than be its Treasurer.

Farewell, Mr. a.s.sistant Director and dear friend, C. DARWIN.

CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. June 5th, 1855.