From William Duppa Crotch 25 January 1861
Uphill House | Weston Super Mare
Jany 25th/61
Dear Sir,
Suddenly after the first written date1 I went to Berlin to work out some difficulties in the Hemiptera—2 I had just returned from Shetland, & had gleaned two facts interesting to you, as I hope— The Shetland ponies during winter are much stinted in food & feed largely on sea-weed— as a result their stomach becomes so modified & reduced in size that few physiologists could guess the proprietor to have been a horse— Again it is well known that MacGillivray contended for physiological characters as invariable & affording specific characters when morphological results are useless—3 Could he revive & see the Shetland Sea gulls or rather their membranous crop—that proventriculus on which he gloated—developing muscular fibre & becoming a complete gallinaceous gizzard under the influence of a change of diet from fish &c. to corn: What would he then say of physio- versus morpho-logical char? one wd. change an obvious species, (so called—), the other, so far, wd. preserve it—tho’ it is difficult to say what change some generations of grain diet wd. produce in the external organs—
In Berlin too I learned an important fact, I fancy new. M. Raymond took near Toulon several specimens of an eyeless beetle (Anophthalmus Raymondi) in a cellar belonging to an ancient monastery long abandoned)—4 How did they get there & where from?
Lecturing to unbelievers is grand fun—especially as I find we hit pretty equally hard & when a man knows the thrust in Hybrid I find it difficult to parry & generally reply by a thrust in Selection— But I waste your time—
Yours sincerely | W. D. Crotch
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Macgillivray, William. 1837–52. History of British birds, indigenous and migratory. 5 vols. London: Scott, Webster, and Geary; William S. Orr and Co.
Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.
Summary
Physiological changes in Shetland ponies and seagulls resulting from change in diet.
Reports on the discovery of eyeless beetles in cellar [i.e., not caves]. How did they get there, and whence?
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-3052
- From
- William Duppa Crotch
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Weston-super-Mare
- Source of text
- DAR 47: 173–4
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 3052,” accessed on 23 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-3052.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 9