26TH JANUARY 2024
Dear Friend of Darwin,
I recently finished reading Charles Darwin’s correspondence for the year 1871. As I say in my review, it was a busy year for Darwin: in addition to publishing The Descent of Man, he continued working on his next book, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and revised The Origin of Species for its sixth and final edition.
Darwin seems to have decided to revise Origin at short notice, primarily to address recent criticism by zoologist St George Jackson Mivart. Darwin had been on amicable terms with Mivart, but their relationship began to sour with the publication a short time before The Descent of Man of Mivart’s book On the Genesis of Species, which threw doubt on the ability of natural selection to explain certain animal features. This book was followed by an anonymous Quarterly Review article by Mivart expressing similar views. Anonymous reviews were standard practice at the time, but Darwin was in no doubt as to the identity of its author.
Darwin saw Mivart’s criticism as particularly damaging because Mivart was an acknowledged expert on primates who fully accepted the fact of evolution, but who was now claiming natural selection could not adequately explain how it came about. Darwin was annoyed at having been accused of dogmatism by Mivart, and by Mivart’s having selectively quoted and misquoted him. He saw nothing original in Mivart’s objections to natural selection, having already raised and, he believed, adequately dealt with most of them in Origin and elsewhere, but he was concerned to see them gaining traction. Darwin correctly assumed Mivart’s misgivings were to some extent religiously motivated. Mivart, a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, confirmed he was particularly concerned about the ‘unnecessary irreligious deductions’ that might be made from Darwin’s theory.
To address Mivart’s damaging attacks on natural selection, Darwin arranged for the re-publication in the UK of an American review highly critical of Mivart’s book. He then decided to address Mivart and other critics in a new edition of Origin, which he immediately began working on. In parallel, Darwin’s great supporter, and Mivart’s former tutor, Thomas Henry Huxley published an essay criticising both Mivart’s book and his anonymous Quarterly Review article. Thanks to Darwin, Huxley also knew full well who had written the review, mischievously outing Mivart without actually naming him:
[T]here are some curious similarities between Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer, and these are sometimes so close, that, if Mr. Mivart thought it worth while, I think he might make out a good case of plagiarism against the Reviewer, who studiously abstains from quoting him.
Ironically, in addressing Mivart’s criticisms in the final edition of Origin, Darwin placed more emphasis on a ‘Lamarckian’ element of his thinking that we now know to be bogus: the Principle of Use and Disuse, which claimed that repeated use or disuse of an organ or behaviour could affect whether or not it was inherited by future generations.
Early the following year, Darwin wrote in response to Mivart asking him to discontinue their correspondence, and comparing Mivart’s actions to those of another former friend:
If I had not been personally known to you, I shd. not have been vexed at the spirit which seems to me & to some others to pervade all your articles in relation to me, notwithstanding general expressions to the contrary. [… Y]our several articles have mortified me more than those of any other man, excepting Prof. Owen; & for the same reasons, as I was silly enough to think he felt friendly towards me.
Natural selection
A book you might enjoy:
Darwin Comes to Town by Menno Schilthuizen
A fascinating exploration of how species are having to adapt to modern, human-centric environments.
Missing links
Some Darwin-related articles you might find of interest:
- Darwin in Patagonia: tracing the naturalist’s route around the foot of South America
A fascinating article revisiting locations visited by Darwin during the Beagle voyage. - Down House - A Tour of Charles Darwin’s Gardens
A video tour of the gardens of Down House, former home of Darwin and his family. - Charles Lyell’s archaeological specimens at the University of Edinburgh
Darwin’s friend and inspiration Charles Lyell is most famous for the huge contribution he made to geology. But he was also interested in archaeology. - Study of Darwin’s finches sheds light on how one species become many
Biologists have analysed nearly two decades of field data on finches in the Galápagos Islands to identify the relationship between beak traits and the longevity of individual finches from four different species.
Original paper: The fitness landscape of a community of Darwin’s finches - Meadow brown butterflies ‘adapt’ to global heating by developing fewer spots
A study has found female chrysalises that develop at higher temperatures have fewer eyespots, making them harder to see in dry grass.
Original paper: Eyespot variation and field temperature in the Meadow Brown butterfly - Flowers ‘giving up’ on scarce insects and evolving to self-pollinate, say scientists
French wild pansies are producing smaller flowers and less nectar than 20 to 30 years ago.
Original paper: Ongoing convergent evolution of a selfing syndrome threatens plant–pollinator interactions - Theoretical research offers explanation as to why some animals shrink over time
The mystery behind why Alaskan horses, cryptodiran turtles and island lizards shrank over time may have been solved in a new study.
Original paper: Ecological determinants of Cope’s rule and its inverse - French cheese under threat
Cheeses host a multitude of microorganisms that turn milk into curds. Selected by humans, these ferments are not exempt from food industry regulations—to the point that blue cheeses and Camembert could disappear. - Scientists crack mystery of how MS gene spread
The DNA of ancient cattle herders has revealed how diseases evolved in Europe over thousands of years.
Original paper: The selection landscape and genetic legacy of ancient Eurasians - Top 10 discoveries about ancient people from DNA in 2023
Paleoanthropologist John Hawks on important genetic studies made last year. - New evidence that insect wings may have evolved from gills
How did insect wings originate? This is a question that represents an unsolved mystery of insect evolution. Despite many years of research, it is still not entirely clear from which body structure insect …
Original paper: Thoracic and abdominal outgrowths in early pterygotes: a clue to the common ancestor of winged insects? - Thick ones, pointy ones—how albatross beaks evolved to match their prey
New research shows how albatross species evolved different beak shapes to make the most of the ocean’s food resources.
Original paper: Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers of shape variation in the albatross compound bill - Can seabirds hear their way across the ocean? Our research suggests so
New research suggests certain seabirds might use infrasound to find places to forage for food.
Original paper: Albatrosses orient toward infrasound while foraging
Journal of researches
Some time ago, I wrote about the unavoidably provisional nature of factual writing: how new facts keep emerging, so you can never hope to write the definitive piece on any subject. I see this as a good thing.
This very newsletter provides one of many examples I could cite of this phenomenon. I’ve already written a chapter for my Darwin book about Mivart and Darwin, specifically about Mivart’s claim that the highly distorted faces of flat-fish could never have evolved through small, incremental steps. But, in reading Darwin’s 1871 correspondence, I unearthed plenty more information about their areas of disagreement. As always, I’ve left myself a note to consider incorporating some of this new information into the second draft of the chapter, but I suspect I won’t make any major changes. As I say, you can’t be definitive on any topic; some things have to be left out. Which, I suppose, is one reason I wrote more about Darwin and Mivart in this newsletter. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste!
Expression of emotions
Thanks as always for making time to read this newsletter. Appropriately, I’m sure it will continue to evolve, so please feel free to send any feedback. And, as always, please share it with anyone you think might be interested, encouraging them to subscribe.
See you next time!
Richard Carter, FCD
friendsofdarwin.com
richardcarter.com
Places to follow me:
Friends of Charles Darwin: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Articles • RSS
Website: Blog • Newsletter • Reviews • Moor book • Darwin book • RSS
Social: Mastodon • Threads • Bluesky • Facebook • Instagram • Substack