From Francis Galton 17 March 1870
42 Rutland Gate SW
March 17 1870
My dear Darwin.
No good news.—
Bartlet1 apprised me this morng. that it was a popular prejudice that young rabbits might not be looked at, reasonable care being taken, so we opened 2 boxes & examined the litters. The first contained 4 dead young ones all true silver greys. The second contained 5 lively young ones all true silver greys. One however has a largish light colored patch on its nose, but Bartlet tells me this is not unusual with silver greys as the very tips of their noses are often white. However this patch is somewhat large & there are faint hopes, I think, that it may prove more considerable than Bartlet believes.2
I have one more litter yet to come & hope to send you the result by Monday evg. post.3
I have coupled a new pair and re-coupled the 2 does whose litters have failed; one of them with a more suitable mate, & expect the following results
Date of expected | Buck transfused | Doe transfused |
litter | from rabbit | from |
colored as below | ||
April 14 | hare colored | hare colored |
April 16 | yellow | yellow |
April 16 | black & white | black & white |
The quantity of blood transfused was only 1.25 per cent of the weight of the rabbits, which is the same thing as 30 oz of blood to an average man. I know this is a very small proportion of the whole amount of blood, but hope by a second operation on the old bucks & by improved operations on all the young ones to get a great deal more of alien qualities into their veins.
Very sincerely yours | Francis Galton.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Galton, Francis. 1871. Experiments in pangenesis, by breeding from rabbits of a pure variety, into whose circulation blood taken from other varieties had previously been largely transfused. [Read 30 March 1871.] Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 19 (1870–1): 393–410.
Summary
Experiments are not going well, but the quantity of blood transfused was small.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7139
- From
- Francis Galton
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- London, Rutland Gate, 42
- Source of text
- DAR 105: 7–8
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7139,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7139.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18