From John Edward Gray 28 February 1866
BM
28 Feb 66
My Dear Darwin
It was very pleasant to see your handwriting & to receive the Larva of the Batrachian from California1
I hope that you are better than when I last heard of you I have been complaining had two attacks of Rheumatic Iritis which shut me up in a Dark Room for 6 or 8 weeks & I find I am growing an Old Man.2
The specimen sent agrees in some respects with Protonopsis horrida the Mud devil, hellbender or alligators of the Lakes3 but if it is it is in a state that I have not seen it before
It is also like the Axolotl in some respects but yet larger & different from any of them I have seen bythby I hear in Paris they have breed the Axolotl & they have specimens with & without external gills4
I will examine the Beast & see if I can make it out as soon as I am done with the Bats5
The Bats like the Paradoxuri 6 regularly worry me there are specimens so alike externally that the best men have regarded them all the same species but when you examine the Bones they prove to belong to several genera & when you have decided that such ansuch specimens are different genera you are not then able to discover any external character to seperate them from each other
On the other hand the specimens of several genera seem to regularly appear Black Brown & red coats not in different seasons & localities because specimens caught at the same time & place present these Variations in colour
With kindest Regards | Ever yours sincly | J E Gray
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bishop, Sherman Chauncey. 1994. Handbook of salamanders: the salamanders of the United States, of Canada, and of lower California. Ithaca and London: Comstock Publishing Associates.
Boulenger, George Albert. 1882. Catalogue of the Batrachia gradientia s. caudata and Batrachia apoda in the collection of the British Museum. 2d edition. London: printed by order of the trustees [of the British Museum].
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Duméril, Auguste. 1866. Observations sur la reproduction dans la ménagerie des reptiles du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle des axolotls, batraciens urodèles a branchies extérieures du Mexique: sur leurs développement et sur leurs métamorphoses. Nouvelles Archives du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle 2: 265–92.
Smith, Hobart M. 1989. Discovery of the axolotl and its early history in biological research. In Developmental biology of the axolotl, edited by John B. Armstrong and George M. Malacinski. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Summary
Has received the larva of the batrachian. Outlines its affinities. Problems of batrachian systematics.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5021
- From
- John Edward Gray
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- British Museum
- Source of text
- DAR 165: 209
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5021,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5021.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 14