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Wearing his knowledge lightly: From Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878
Summary
Darwin received letters from so many people and wrote so many fascinating letters himself, that it’s hard to choose from many letters that stand out, but one of this editor’s favourites, that always brings a smile, is a letter from Fritz Müller written 5…
Matches: 4 hits
- … his observations on the various odour-producing organs in butterflies together with his speculations …
- … Müller’s attempts to raise caterpillars from eggs of butterflies and to find suitable food plants …
- … unidentified species of the tribe Heliconiini (passion-vine butterflies) on a leaf of Passiflora …
- … solid ground, than that of the pope, the infallibility of butterflies also is not absolute’. (The …
Mary Treat
Summary
Mary Treat was a naturalist from New Jersey who made significant contributions to the fields of entomolgy and botany. Over the period 1871–1876, she exchanged fifteen letters with Darwin - more than any other woman naturalist.
Matches: 1 hits
- … topics, from the relationship between the diet and sex of butterflies to the sensitivity of …
Women’s scientific participation
Summary
Observers | Fieldwork | Experimentation | Editors and critics | Assistants Darwin’s correspondence helps bring to light a community of women who participated, often actively and routinely, in the nineteenth-century scientific community. Here is a…
Matches: 4 hits
- … filiformis . She also references her observational work on butterflies and offers to observe birds, …
- … and sends details of his experiments on colour and sex in butterflies. He explains that he will …
- … Henry Doubleday details his experiments on colour and sex in butterflies and moths, all of which …
- … filiformis . She also references her observational work on butterflies and offers to observe birds, …
Darwin in letters, 1862: A multiplicity of experiments
Summary
1862 was a particularly productive year for Darwin. This was not only the case in his published output (two botanical papers and a book on the pollination mechanisms of orchids), but more particularly in the extent and breadth of the botanical experiments…
Matches: 3 hits
- … it, and Henry Walter Bates invoked it to explain mimicry in butterflies. Moreover, his work was …
- … account for the mimicry he had observed among South American butterflies. The paper in which he did …
- … Easter at Down House. When Bates’s paper on mimetic butterflies was published towards the end …
Religion
Summary
Design|Personal Belief|Beauty|The Church Perhaps the most notorious realm of controversy over evolution in Darwin's day was religion. The same can be said of the evolution controversy today; however the nature of the disputes and the manner in…
Matches: 2 hits
- … Society of Edinburgh (1864), Darwin used birds, flowers and butterflies as examples to illustrate …
- … of his paper on beauty. He discusses beauty of birds and butterflies, noting in particular that …
Darwin on race and gender
Summary
Darwin’s views on race and gender are intertwined, and mingled also with those of class. In Descent of man, he tried to explain the origin of human races, and many of the differences between the sexes, with a single theory: sexual selection. Sexual…
Matches: 1 hits
- … familiar examples are the brightly coloured wings of male butterflies, the male peacock’s elaborate …
Alfred Russel Wallace
Summary
Wallace was a leading Victorian naturalist, with wide-ranging interests from biogeography and evolutionary theory to spiritualism and politics. He was born in 1823 in Usk, a small town in south-east Wales, and attended a grammar school in Hertford. At the…
Matches: 1 hits
- … and collected around 125,000 specimens, especially butterflies and birds, many of which were unknown …
Diagrams and drawings in letters
Summary
Over 850 illustrations from the printed volumes of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin have been added to the online transcripts of the letters. The contents include maps, diagrams, drawings, sketches and photographs, covering geological, botanical,…
Matches: 1 hits
- … 1 June 1871] Fritz Müller's observations on butterflies and termites, 16 January …
Descent
Summary
There are more than five hundred letters associated with the research and writing of Darwin’s book, Descent of man and selection in relation to sex (Descent). They trace not only the tortuous route to eventual publication, but the development of Darwin’s…
Matches: 2 hits
- … questions about the colouring of male and female moths and butterflies, followed by supplementary …
- … a proposed modification of Darwin’s view that female butterflies and moths had not been ‘made dull …
Darwin in letters, 1867: A civilised dispute
Summary
Charles Darwin’s major achievement in 1867 was the completion of his large work, The variation of animals and plants under domestication (Variation). The importance of Darwin’s network of correspondents becomes vividly apparent in his work on expression in…
Matches: 3 hits
- … problem of bright colours in caterpillars as well as in butterflies. Wallace was sure that the …
- … suggested a simple experiment to determine whether female butterflies preferred more colourful males …
- … bright caterpillars, the idea that bright colours in male butterflies resulted from sexual selection …
Rewriting Origin - the later editions
Summary
For such an iconic work, the text of Origin was far from static. It was a living thing that Darwin continued to shape for the rest of his life, refining his ‘one long argument’ through a further five English editions. Many of his changes were made in…
Matches: 2 hits
- … a precious mess of it . A specialist in tropical butterflies, Bates responded to …
- … and his use of natural selection to explain mimicry in butterflies delighted Darwin, who exclaimed …
Sexual selection
Summary
Although natural selection could explain the differences between species, Darwin realised that (other than in the reproductive organs themselves) it could not explain the often marked differences between the males and females of the same species. So what…
Matches: 1 hits
- … mammals, or in gaudy plumage & ornaments as with birds & butterflies? . . . what I want to …
Darwin in letters, 1863: Quarrels at home, honours abroad
Summary
At the start of 1863, Charles Darwin was actively working on the manuscript of The variation of animals and plants under domestication, anticipating with excitement the construction of a hothouse to accommodate his increasingly varied botanical experiments…
Matches: 2 hits
- … strongly about the quality of Bates’s work on mimicry in butterflies, which had been published in …
- … unsigned review of it himself (‘Review of Bates on mimetic butterflies’) for the Natural History …
Darwin in letters,1866: Survival of the fittest
Summary
The year 1866 began well for Charles Darwin, as his health, after several years of illness, was now considerably improved. In February, Darwin received a request from his publisher, John Murray, for a new edition of Origin. Darwin got the fourth…
Matches: 2 hits
- … on alpine floras, Henry Walter Bates’s article on mimetic butterflies, Lubbock’s observations of …
- … dimorphism, Bates’s and Wallace’s work on mimetic butterflies, and Wallace’s work on human races. …
Natural Science and Femininity
Summary
Discussion Questions|Letters A conflation of masculine intellect and feminine thoughts, habits and feelings, male naturalists like Darwin inhabited an uncertain gendered identity. Working from the private domestic comfort of their homes and exercising…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Doubleday details his experiments on colour and sex in butterflies and moths all of which were …
Darwin’s first love
Summary
Darwin’s long marriage to Emma Wedgwood is well documented, but was there an earlier romance in his life? How was his departure on the Beagle entangled with his first love? The answers are revealed in a series of flirtatious letters that Darwin was…
Matches: 1 hits
- … butterfly (one of the rarest and most spectacular of British butterflies, whose habitat in the …
Darwin in letters, 1869: Forward on all fronts
Summary
At the start of 1869, Darwin was hard at work making changes and additions for a fifth edition of Origin. He may have resented the interruption to his work on sexual selection and human evolution, but he spent forty-six days on the task. Much of the…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Weir in London sent more information on male and female butterflies, supplementing that received the …
Darwin in letters, 1871: An emptying nest
Summary
The year 1871 was an extremely busy and productive one for Darwin, with the publication in February of his long-awaited book on human evolution, Descent of man. The other main preoccupation of the year was the preparation of his manuscript on expression.…
Matches: 1 hits
- … and contributor of observations on South African butterflies and beetles to Descent , could not …
Darwin in letters, 1861: Gaining allies
Summary
The year 1861 marked an important change in the direction of Darwin’s work. He had weathered the storm that followed the publication of Origin, and felt cautiously optimistic about the ultimate acceptance of his ideas. The letters from this year provide an…
Matches: 1 hits
- … Bates had investigated cases in several genera of butterflies and other insects, such as the hover …
Origin: the lost changes for the second German edition
Summary
Darwin sent a list of changes made uniquely to the second German edition of Origin to its translator, Heinrich Georg Bronn. That lost list is recreated here.
Matches: 1 hits
- … of one genus and even varieties within one species of butterflies in the large Amazona valley mimick …
