From Benjamin Dann Walsh [25 February 1867]1
insects; in Stainton’s Entom. Annual (1861, p. 39) you will find good proof that worker wasps can & do generate worker wasps.2 The demonstration is simple. A nest containing a single female & several workers is in early spring deprived of the female; & it is found that the building of fresh cells & the production of fresh workers therein goes on as successfully as if the mother-female had remained in the nest. With regard to your ⟨ ⟩
⟨ ⟩ which Dr. Velie assures me never builds a nest for itself, & the books say the same? As with your Cuckoo, the other species belonging to the same genus have no such parasitic habits.3
I enclose you a copy of a recent Lecture by Agassiz, the marked portions in which I thought would interest you. I suspect he has mistaken the deposits left by floating Ice-bergs for true Glaciers. His theory about Glaciers moving on level ground might do for high northern latitudes4 ⟨ ⟩
Editing the Practical Entomologist does undoubtedly take up a good deal of my time, but I also pick up a good deal of information of real scientific value from its correspondents.5 Besides, this great American nation has hitherto had a supreme contempt for Natural History, because they have hitherto believed that it has nothing to do with the dollars and cents. After hammering away at them for a year or two, I have at last succeeded in touching the ‘pocket nerve’ in Uncle Sam’s body, and he is gradually being galvanised into the conviction that science has the power to make him richer. ⟨ ⟩
⟨ ⟩ You cannot have the remotest conception of the ideas of even our best-educated Americans as to the pursuit of science. I never yet met with a single one who could be brought to understand how or why a man should pursue science for its own pure and holy sake.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Agassiz, Elizabeth Cary. 1885. Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence. 2 vols. London: Macmillan and Company.
Agassiz, Louis. 1867. The geological formation of the valley of the Amazon. The river, its basin and tributories. The ancient glaciers in the tropics. The aquatic animals of the Amazon. The land animals of South America. The monkeys and native inhabitants. [Six lectures read at the Cooper Institute, New York, 5, 11, 12, 18, 20, and 26 February 1867.] New York Herald Tribune, 6 February 1867, p. 8, 12 February 1867, p. 5, 13 February 1867, p. 5, 19 February 1867, p. 8, 21 February 1867, p. 5, 27 February 1867, p. 8.
Birds of the world: Handbook of the birds of the world. By Josep del Hoyo et al. 17 vols. Barcelona: Lynx editions. 1991–2013.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Lurie, Edward. 1960. Louis Agassiz: a life in science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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.
Smith, Frederick. 1861. Observations on the effects of the late unfavourable season on hymenopterous insects; notes on the economy of certain species, on the capture of others of extreme rarity, and on species new to the British fauna. Entomologist’s Annual (1861): 33–45.
Stone, S. 1860. Vespidæ in 1860. Zoologist: a Popular Miscellany of Natural History 18: 7261–6.
Summary
Sends a copy [missing] of a lecture by L. Agassiz on glaciers.
Claims worker wasps can generate additional workers in the absence of the fertile female.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5419
- From
- Benjamin Dann Walsh
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- Darwin Library–CUL (bound with Siebold 1857), ML 1: 248–9
- Physical description
- AL inc
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5419,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5419.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 15