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To Raphael Meldola   19 [June 1879]1

Down | Beckenham | Kent

19th.

Dear Mr. Meldola

When I read the F. M Paper your doubt occurred to me and I must say this, I would rather have expected that the knowledge of distasteful caterpillars would have been inherited, but I distinctly remember an account (when Wallace first propounded his—warning colors) published of some birds, I think turkeys, being experimented upon and they shook their heads after trying some caterpillars as if they had a horrid taste in their mouths.2 I fancied this thing was published by Mr. Weir or could it have been by Mr. Butler?3 It would be well to look in Mr. Belt’s “Nicaragua” as he tried some experiments.4 I am not sure that there is not some statement of the kind in it.

Yours faithfully | Charles Darwin

I daresay Mr. Wallace or Bates would remember the statement of some birds shaking their heads to which I refer.5

Footnotes

1
The month and year are established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Raphael Meldola, 18 June 1879.
2
See letter from Raphael Meldola, 18 June 1879. On Fritz Müller’s paper (F. Müller 1879c), see the letter from Raphael Meldola, 4 June 1879, n. 1. Alfred Russel Wallace mentioned the incident with the young turkeys in a letter to CD of 24 February [1867] (Correspondence vol. 15). The incident was originally related by Henry Tibbats Stainton during a discussion at the Entomological Society on 3 December 1866 (see Transactions of the Entomological Society of London (Journal of Proceedings) 3d ser. 5 (1865–7): xliv–xlviii). The insect rejected by the turkeys was an adult moth of Spilosoma menthastri (a synonym of S. lubricipeda, the white ermine moth).
4
In his book The naturalist in Nicaragua (Belt 1874, p. 321), Thomas Belt described a duck throwing a brightly coloured frog out of its mouth and then jerking its head as if trying to throw off some unpleasant taste.
5
Henry Walter Bates was vice-president of the Entomological Society of London at this time; both he and Wallace were long-standing members.

Bibliography

Belt, Thomas. 1874a. The naturalist in Nicaragua: a narrative of a residence at the gold mines of Chontales; journeys in the savannahs and forests. With observations on animals and plants in reference to the theory of evolution of living forms. London: John Murray.

Müller, Fritz. 1879c. Ituna und Thyridia. Ein merkwürdiges Beispiel von Mimicry bei Schmetterlingen. Kosmos 5: 100–8.

Summary

Shares RM’s misgivings about Fritz Müller’s mutually protecting mimics. Would expect bird’s response to distasteful caterpillars to be instinctive. Believes J. J. Weir or Thomas Belt may have investigated the point.

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12115,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12115.xml

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