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 w^d. change an obvious species, (so called—), the other, so far, w^d. preserve it—tho’ it is difficult to say what change some generations of grain diet w^d. 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