Darwin Correspondence Project

Down Bromley Kent

20th

My dear Lyell

I send Blyth— it is a dreadful hand-writing—the passage is on p. 4.—   In former note he told me he feared there was hardly chance of getting money for Chinese Expedition & spoke of your kindness.—

Many thanks for your long & interesting letter. I wonder, admire & thank you for your patience in writing so much.— I rather demur to Deinosaurus not having ``free will'', as surely as we have.— I demur, also, to your putting Huxleys ``force & matter'' in same category with natural selection. The latter may of course be quite false view, but surely it is not getting beyond our depths to first causes.—

It is truly very remarkable that the gestation of hound shd. vary so much, whilst that of man does not. It may be from multiple origins.—   The eggs from Musk & common Duck take intermediate period in hatching. But I shd. rather look at it, as one of ten-thousand cases, which we cannot explain—namely when one part or function varies in one species & not in another.—

Hooker has told me nothing about his explanation of few Arctic forms; I knew the fact before.—   I had speculated on what I presume from what you say, his explanation; but there must have been at all times an Arctic region.—   I fd. speculation got too complex, as it seemed to me, to be worth following out.—

I have been doing some most interesting work with Orchids.—   Talk of adaptation in Woodpeckers—some of the Orchids beat it.— I showed the case to Elizabeth Wedgwood & her remark was ``now you have upset your own book, for you won't persuade me that this could be effected by nat. selection''.—

Yours affect | C. Darwin