From Raphael Meldola 21 January [1872]1
Star Chemical Works, | Brentford.
Jan. 21st.
Dear Sir,
The kindness you have displayed in answering former letters induces me to apply to you once again for your opinion in a small matter connected with Natural Selection at which subject I am at present working.2 The paper on mimicry that I presented to the Linnean Soc. & which was read to that body on May 4th. 1870 was returned a few weeks ago by Mr. Stainton to my friend Mr. Butler with a letter stating that the Council had not ordered the paper for publication.3 Seeing no reason to alter any arguments that I therein adduced to prove that mimicry was produced by Nat. Selec. I have determined to re-model the paper & make large additions & let Mr. Janson publish it as he has consented to do.4
The object of my troubling you is briefly this:—
I have given the Nat. Selec. explanation of mimicry as given by Bates & Wallace & having accepted this explanation as the true one I proceed to make certain deductions from this explanation which I propose to verify by observation.5 Amongst these deductions is the following:—
If mimicry be produced by Nat. Selec. one would expect that mimetic characters being of the utmost importance to a species would have been rigidly fixed by Natural Selection & such characters we should therefore expect to find but little variable or variable only within mimetic limits.
Before proceeding to examine mimics for the purpose of verifying this deduction would you be good enough to inform me if the deduction is correct.
I am very sorry for thus troubling you but a word or two from you would assure me that I am working in the right direction.
Yours obediently, | Raphael Meldola.
Star Chemical Works, | Brentford.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bates, Henry Walter. 1861. Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidæ. [Read 21 November 1861.] Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 23 (1860–2): 495–566.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Meldola, Raphael. 1873. On a certain class of cases of variable protective colouring in insects. [Read 4 February 1873.] Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (1873): 153–62.
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
[Wallace, Alfred Russel.] 1867b. Mimicry and other protective resemblances among animals. Westminster Review n.s. 32: 1–43.
Summary
Discusses his paper on mimicry and natural selection [Land and Water 9 (1871): 321]. Believes natural selection tends to fix mimetic characters rigidly.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-8170
- From
- Raphael Meldola
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Star Chemical Works, Brentford
- Source of text
- DAR 171: 117
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 8170,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8170.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 20