From Charles Lyell1 6 October 1860
The geographl. vars. of some species on the American & European sides of the Atlantic, Vanessa Atalanta, Pteris aquilina, remarkable. See p. 700, 9th. Ed. Principles.2 The time required by th. of the living species to accommodate themselves to the new circums. will never be granted. Not that a red Indian might not be developed into something as good or better than a White Man but as it wd take 10,000 or more years & he is not allowed as many centuries he must be improved off the face of ye earth & he is therefore not transmutable for any practical purpose of salvation in this world.
In no other way can any theory of developt. or transmutn. be reconciled with the stationary conditn. of species in general, or the fact that they are dying out instead of becoming altered when their existence is at stake.
Letter to Darwin Oct 6. 1860
Footnotes
Summary
Wonders why the coracoid bone in the flightless Apteryx is so large when the clavicles are reduced. The clavicles are even separate in the ostrich. The large coracoid in reptiles is explained by the connection to the forelimbs.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-2940A
- From
- Charles Lyell, 1st baronet
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Source of text
- The University of Edinburgh Centre for Research Collections (Lyell collection Coll-203/A3/7: 22)
- Physical description
- ACC 1p
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 2940A,” accessed on 19 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2940A.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8