Questions about the breeding of animals : [1840] facsimile / Charles Darwin ; With an introduction by Sir Gavin de Beer.

  • Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
Date:
1968
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Questions about the breeding of animals : [1840] facsimile / Charles Darwin ; With an introduction by Sir Gavin de Beer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/24 (page VI)
    address from 1 January 1839 until 17 September 1842 when he went to live in the country at Down House in the village of Downe Kent. In the printed Catalogue of the Books, Manuscripts, Maps and Drawings in the British Museum [Natural History), (Vol. VI. Supplement A-I. 1922) the pamphlet is dated 1840?. A search through Darwin's letters during this period tends to confirm this date. In a letter^ to his cousin William Darwin Fox, who was well informed on general matters relating to natural history, quoted by Francis Darwin as written in June, without specifying the year, but printed on a page bearing 1838 in its heading, Darwin wrote: I am delighted to hear you are such a good man as not to have forgotten my questions about the crossing of animals. It is my prime hobby, and I really think some day I shall be able to do something in that most intricate subject, species and varieties. As it was only on 28 September 1838 that Darwin, on reading Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, saw how natural selection works,® before which time he refused to hazard his arm on this subject or speak to anyone about it at all, this letter to Fox cannot have been written in June 1838. While he started his Notebooks on Transmutation of Species in July 1837, his Journal shows that during that year, 1838, and during 1839 he was mostly engaged in geological work, preparing his books for publi¬ cation, visiting and meditating on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and editing the Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. . . . There was also his marriage and the establishment of his home in Upper Gower Street. The letter must probably be dated June 1840, which agrees with the entry in the JournalDuring the summer when well enough did a good deal of Species work. In January 1841 Darwin^ wrote again to Fox, saying, I continue to collect all kinds of facts about 'Varieties and Species', for my some-day work to be so entitled; the smallest contributions thankfully accepted ; descriptions of offspring between all domestic birds and animals, dogs, cats, &c., &c., very valuable. This is exactly what the pamphlet is about, and this letter to Fox was clearly a reminder—I send you this P.S. as a memento—of his former letter. The Notebooks on Transmutation of Species, scribbled between July 1837 and July 1839, are riddled with queries about problems of breeding and crossing in plants and animals, hybridism, and inheritance. The pamphlet represents a consolidated questionnaire as regards the animal kingdom. ® Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by Francis Darwin [bereafter referred to as Life & Letters'^, London: John Murray, 1887, 1, p. 298. ® Notebook III, MS p. 135; op. cit., 3, 1967, p. 162. '' Darwin's Journal, edited by Sir Gavin de Beer, Bull. Brit. Mus. [Nat. Hist.) Historical Series, 2, 1959, pp. 1-21 ; reference on p. 9. ® Life & Letters, 1, p. 301. vi