Letter 2646 — Darwin, C. R. to Huxley, T. H., 9 Jan [1860]

Down Bromley Kent

Jan 9^th

My dear Huxley

If on 11^th you have half-an-hour to spare you might like to see a very good show of Pigeons, & the enclosed card will admit you.—^f1

The History of Error is quite unimportant, but it is curious to observe how exactly & accurately my Grandfather (in Zoonomia Vol. I. p. 504 1794) gives Lamarcks theory.^f2 I will quote one sentence Speaking of Birds Beaks, He says “All which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food, & to have been delivered to their posterity with constant improvement of them for the purposes required.—”^f3 Lamarck published Phil. Zoolog in 1809. The Zoonomia was translated into many languages.—^f4

Ever yours | C. Darwin

Grote, the Historian, was much struck with the article in Times.—^f5

Endorsement: Endorsement: `1860′

Footnotes

f1

The annual show of the Philoperisteron Society was held on 11 January 1860 at the Freemason’s Tavern, London (Cottage Gardener, 17 January 1860, p. 248). CD had been a member of the society since 1855 (see Correspondence vol. 5, letter to W. B. Tegetmeier, 31 August [1855]). Huxley intended to describe CD’s pigeon work in a lecture on natural selection at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on 10 February 1860; to assist Huxley, CD had provided him with information on pigeon breeding in a previous letter. CD had also mentioned the expertise and quaint practices of pigeon fanciers and recommended that Huxley attend an exhibition (see Correspondence vol. 7, letter to T. H. Huxley, 27 November [1859]).

f2

CD refers to his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck. Huxley had ridiculed Lamarck’s theory of transmutation in his review of Origin in The Times, 26 December 1859, p. 8. See letter to T. H. Huxley, 1 January [1860].

f3

E. Darwin 1794–6, 1: 504. CD’s copy of the work, inherited from his father Robert Waring Darwin, is in the Cambridge University Library. CD marked the passage quoted in the letter and wrote next to it: `Lamarck!!’. A slip pasted on the same page reads: `504 | Lamarck concisely prestalled by my Grandfather’. CD inserted a note to this effect in the `historical sketch’ included in the American edition of Origin, p. vi. See Appendix IV.

f4

In spite of CD’s inference, there is no evidence to suggest that Lamarck was aware of Erasmus Darwin’s work when he composed Philosophie zoologique (Lamarck 1809).

f5

George Grote, the author of A history of Greece (1846–56), was a fellow of the Royal Society. CD met him when he lived in London (Autobiography, p. 111). He had read early volumes of Grote’s history in 1853 and finished the sixth volume in December 1859 (Correspondence vol. 4, Appendix IV, 128: 5, 25).