Book review: ‘The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume 25 • 1877’

The twenty-fifth volume of Charles Darwin’s correspondence comprises all the surviving letters both from and to Darwin from the year 1877.

During 1877, Darwin completed and published his book The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, which he incorrectly believed would be his last. He also published a paper entitled A Biographical Sketch of an Infant, which was based on observations he had made many years earlier of his first child, William.

Working closely with his son Francis, Darwin spent much of the year investigating the movement of plants, and the waxy blooms on certain fruits and leaves. He also encouraged a number of friends and family-members to carry out observations on earthworms. The year also saw Darwin receiving a number of tributes and honours, including a specially commissioned photograph album of German and Austrian scientists, a similar album of Dutch admirers, and an honorary Doctor of Law degree from his alma mater, Cambridge University.

Highlights from Darwin’s correspondence in this volume include:

• Darwin’s views on girls’ being allowed to study physiology. (He is fairly progressive, but says it’s more important for boys to study the subject as no woman has yet advanced the science!)
• Darwin’s delight at August Weismann’s paper arguing that caterpillar spots make them resemble snakes. He had previously thought the idea fanciful.
• A long letter enclosing a photograph album of Darwin’s Dutch scientific disciples, and Darwin’s grateful reply: “I am well aware that my books could never have been written and would not have made any impression on the public mind, had not an immense amount of material been collected by a long series of admirable observers; & it is to them that honour is chiefly due.”
• Having, a short while later, received a similar album from German and Austrian scientists, Darwin gives a brief account of when he first became convinced that species evolve:“When I was on board the Beagle, I believed in the permanence of Species, but, as far as I can remember, vague doubts occasionally flitted across my mind. On my return home in the autumn of 1836, I immediately began to prepare my journal for publication, and then saw, how many facts indicated the common descent of species, so that in July 1837 I opened a note book to record any facts which might bear on the question. But I did not become convinced that species were mutable until, I think, two or three years had elapsed.”
• A letter from a fan who intends to name his son after Darwin.
• A correspondent claiming human vestigial tails are common on a particular Indonesian island.
• Darwin recounting a home visit from former (and future) Prime Minister William Gladstone: “I never saw him before & was much pleased with him: I expected a stern, overwhelming sort of man, but found him as soft & smooth as butter, & very pleasant.”
• A letter from the trainer of a talented cockatoo!
• Darwin recalling finding a mastodon fossil in South America. The gauchos he was with thought it was a large, burrowing animal like a chinchilla.
• Darwin expressing pleasure at George Romanes’ negative results after investigating a ‘rogue’ medium.
• Darwin being amused at having been abused by an archimandrite (senior figure in Eastern Orthodox Church).
• A letter from an Irishman challenging Darwin’s quoting other writers’ anti-Irish sentiments in The Descent of Man.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker describing being pestered by the Emperor of Brazil for a meeting with Darwin.
• Joseph Dalton Hooker on being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India.
• Darwin opining: ‘I am as great an admirer as any man can be of H[erbert] Spencer’s genius; but his deductive style of putting almost everything never satisfies me, & the conclusion which I continually draw is that “here is a grand suggestion for many years work.”.’
• Darwin adding his name to a petition supporting native voting rights in South Africa.
• Alfred Russel Wallace once again politely disagreeing with Darwin regarding female choice in sexual selection, and Darwin’s equally polite response pointing out several counter-arguments.
• Darwin defending using teleological-sounding language when describing evolution:“There is much justice in your criticisms on my use of the terms object, end, purpose; but those who believe that organs have been gradually modified by natural selection for a special purpose, may I think use the above terms correctly though no conscious being has intervened. I have found much difficulty in my occasional attempts to avoid these terms; but I might perhaps have always spok[en] of a beneficial or serviceable effect.”
• Darwin’s brother recommending a novel whose heroine “has lovely eyes & does not say ten words in three volumes”. He predicts Emma Darwin won’t like it.
• Darwin’s joyful letter to his son William’s fiancée, Sara Sedgwick, and her reply.
• Darwin’s letter to William Gladstone on colour vision, and Gladstone’s reply explaining his hypothesis that Homer was colour blind.
• Darwin explaining his belief that evolution does not occurr suddenly, at intervals. (But compare this with my article The surprise punctuationist.)
• Darwin providing an example of a plant-movement diagram.
• Darwin (via his son George) getting the great physicist James Clark Maxwell to answer a query about how bloom might effect the drying time of wet leaves.
• A letter from an American correspondent who has been to see P.T. Barnham’s Colorado Giant—a supposedly petrified ancient human—and immediately identified it as a fake.
• A telegram from some Edinburgh students, asking Darwin to become Lord Rector of their university, and Darwin’s polite refusal.
• A letter from a correspondent who has noticed that merging (using a stereo viewer) photographs of different people taken from similar angles makes them look more attractive. (Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton had previously noticed blended faces appear more attractive.)
• A highly detailed, illustrated memorandum regarding Roman excavations at Silchester and associated earthworm activity.
• Darwin recounting having attended his honorary LL.D. (Doctor of Law) ceremony at Cambridge, above which students suspended a stuffed monkey.
• Darwin thanking Thomas Henry Huxley for the dinner-speech he made, in Darwin’s absence, after the LL.D. ceremony, declaring: “I know, alas, too well how greatly you overestimate me”.
• A long letter from Samuel Butler regarding his latest book, Life and habit, which disagrees with Darwinian theory. Butler has read St George Jackson Mivart and become a Lamarckian—without actually having read Lamarck. (For more on Mivart, see Friends of Charles Darwin Newsletter No. 18).
• Darwin being sent a sphinx moth with a 22cm-long proboscis. (For more on Darwin and moths with long proboscises, see here.)
• Darwin’s cousin William Darwin Fox declaring “I am very glad you are become a smoker, as I hope you will find it a great comfort, and do you much good. Up to middle age I think it does more harm than good, but after, it is often most useful.” (Darwin had taken snuff most of his life, but seems to have also taken up cigarettes in the 1870s.)
• Thomas Edison’s letter to Darwin on insects that emit naphthaline, possibly as a predator deterrent
• A letter from Elizabeth Anne Greaves (who has Darwin family connections), offering to sell Darwin a portrait of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin by the famous painter Joseph Wright of Derby. Darwin later took her up on the offer.

As with all the volumes in this series, this book is really aimed at people with a serious interest in Charles Darwin. As with all the other volumes, every letter is annotated with meticulously researched footnotes explaining its context and references. The series as a whole is a masterpiece of scholarship.