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Darwin Correspondence Project

From Raphael Meldola   18 June 1879

21 John St. | Bedford Row, | London W.C.

June 18/79

My dear Mr. Darwin,

Herewith I return the No. of Kosmos which you were good enough to lend me— accept my best thanks for the loan of it.1 I have transferred Fritz Müller’s paper in extenso to our ‘Proceedings’ having obtained (as you suggested) permission to do so from Dr. Ernst Krause who is also going to be so kind as to send me galvanoplasts of the wood-cuts.2 Fritz M’s arguments for the production of mimicry between two butterflies both protected by distastefulness appear to me very ingenious & I beg to call your special attention to the concluding portions of his paper as you say it is new to you. You will see that his proof rests upon the belief that young birds & other insect persecutors do not come into the world with a knowledge of what species to eat & which to avoid, so that a certain number of distasteful individuals have to fall victims to this inexperience.

Unfortunately for the argument F. M. adduces no facts in support of this view. Can you recall any observations on this subject? Jenner Weir says that in his aviary a distasteful caterpillar was always recognized at once, but it appears to me that the case is hardly analogous, inasmuch as such caterpillars always hang out danger signals in the way of brightly coloured stripes, hairs or spines.3 To suppose that young birds can at once distinguish among the myriad insect forms by which they are surrounded the palatable from the unpalatable is to credit them with an instinctive knowledge of species that might be envied by our most ardent Iconographers. I will send you the translation of the paper & the discussion to which it gave rise as soon as it is in type.4

Yours sincerely, | R. Meldola.

Footnotes

See letter to Raphael Meldola, 6 June [1879]. Meldola had borrowed the May 1879 issue of Kosmos.
On Fritz Müller’s paper (F. Müller 1879c), see the letter from Raphael Meldola, 4 June 1879, n. 1. Galvanoplasts or electrotypes were a form of stereotype made by electrolytic deposition of a coat of copper on a wax mould of the type-form or woodblock.
John Jenner Weir had published on the relation between the colour and edibility of butterfly larvae (J. J. Weir 1869 and 1870).
The English translation of F. Müller 1879c was published in Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (Proceedings) (F. Müller 1879d); no offprint has been found, but CD’s copy of the issue containing it is in his collection of unbound journals in the Darwin Library–CUL.

Bibliography

Müller, Fritz. 1879c. Ituna und Thyridia. Ein merkwürdiges Beispiel von Mimicry bei Schmetterlingen. Kosmos 5: 100–8.

Müller, Fritz. 1879d. Ituna und Thyridia; a remarkable case of mimicry in butterflies. [Read 4 June 1879.] Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (Proceedings) (1879): xx–xxix.

Weir, John Jenner. 1869. On insects and insectivorous birds; and especially on the relation between the colour and the edibility of Lepidoptera and their larvae. [Read 1 March 1869.] Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (1869): 21–6.

Weir, John Jenner. 1870. Further observations on the relation between the colour and the edibility of Lepidoptera and their larvae. [Read 4 July 1870.] Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (1870): 337–9.

Summary

Discusses Fritz Müller’s paper on the mutual protection of certain mimics ["Ituna and Thyridita", Trans. R. Entomol. Soc. Lond. (1879): xx–xxviii]. [Thyridia!?]

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12113
From
Raphael Meldola
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, John St, 21
Source of text
DAR 171: 138
Physical description
ALS 3pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12113,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12113.xml

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