Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 · Charles Darwin
C. DARWIN.
P.S.--When will you return to Kew? I have forgotten one main object of my letter, to thank you MUCH for your offer of the 'Hort. Journal,' but I have ordered the two numbers. [The two following extracts [1847] give the continuation and conclusion of the coal battle. "By the way, as submarine coal made you so wrath, I thought I would experimentise on Falconer and Bunbury (The late Sir C. Bunbury, well-known as a palaeobotanist.) together, and it made [them] even more savage; 'such infernal nonsense ought to be thrashed out of me.' Bunbury was more polite and contemptuous. So I now know how to stir up and show off any Botanist. I wonder whether Zoologists and Geologists have got their tender points; I wish I could find out." "I cannot resist thanking you for your most kind note. Pray do not think that I was annoyed by your letter: I perceived that you had been thinking with animation, and accordingly expressed yourself strongly, and so I understood it. Forfend me from a man who weighs every expression with Scotch prudence. I heartily wish you all success in your noble problem, and I shall be very curious to have some talk with you and hear your ultimatum."] CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. (Parts of two letters.) Down [October, 1847]. I congratulate you heartily on your arrangements being completed, with some prospect for the future. It will be a noble voyage and journey, but I wish it was over, I shall miss you selfishly and all ways to a dreadful extent ...I am in great perplexity how we are to meet...I can well understand how dreadfully busy you must be. If you CANNOT come here, you MUST let me come to you for a night; for I must have one more chat and one more quarrel with you over the coal.
By the way, I endeavoured to stir up Lyell (who has been staying here some days with me) to theorise on the coal: his oolitic UPRIGHT Equisetums are dreadful for my submarine flora. I should die much easier if some one would solve me the coal question. I sometimes think it could not have been formed at all. Old Sir Anthony Carlisle once said to me gravely, that he supposed Megatherium and such cattle were just sent down from heaven to see whether the earth would support them; and I suppose the coal was rained down to puzzle mortals. You must work the coal well in India. Ever yours, C. DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [November 6th, 1847.] My dear Hooker, I have just received your note with sincere grief: there is no help for it. I shall always look at your intention of coming here, under such circumstances, as the greatest proof of friendship I ever received from mortal man. My conscience would have upbraided me in not having come to you on Thursday, but, as it turned out, I could not, for I was quite unable to leave Shrewsbury before that day, and I reached home only last night, much knocked up. Without I hear to-morrow (which is hardly possible), and if I am feeling pretty well, I will drive over to Kew on Monday morning, just to say farewell. I will stay only an hour...
CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [November, 1847.] My dear Hooker, I am very unwell, and incapable of doing anything. I do hope I have not inconvenienced you. I was so unwell all yesterday, that I was rejoicing you were not here; for it would have been a bitter mortification to me to have had you here and not enjoyed your last day. I shall not now see you. Farewell, and God bless you. Your affectionate friend, C. DARWIN. I will write to you in India. [In 1847 appeared a paper by Mr. D. Milne (Now Mr. Milne Home. The essay was published in Transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society, vol. xvi.), in which my father's Glen Roy work is criticised, and which is referred to in the following characteristic extract from a letter to Sir J. Hooker:] "I have been bad enough for these few last days, having had to think and write too much about Glen Roy...Mr. Milne having attacked my theory, which made me horribly sick." I have not been able to find any published reply to Mr. Milne, so that I imagine the "writing" mentioned was confined to letters. Mr. Milne's paper was not destructive to the Glen Roy paper, and this my father recognises in the following extract from a letter to Lyell (March, 1847). The reference to Chambers is explained by the fact that he accompanied Mr. Milne in his visit to Glen Roy. "I got R. Chambers to give me a sketch of Milne's Glen Roy views, and I have re-read my paper, and am, now that I have heard what is to be said, not even staggered. It is provoking and humiliating to find that Chambers not only had not read with any care my paper on this subject, or even looked at the coloured map, so that the new shelf described by me had not been searched for, and my arguments and facts of detail not in the least attended to. I entirely gave up the ghost, and was quite chicken-hearted at the Geological Society, till you reassured and reminded me of the main facts in the whole case."
The two following letters to Lyell, though of later date (June, 1848), bear on the same subject:-- "I was at the evening meeting [of the Geological Society], but did not get within hail of you. What a fool (though I must say a very amusing one) -- did make of himself. Your speech was refreshing after it, and was well characterized by Fox (my cousin) in three words--'What a contrast!' That struck me as a capital speculation about the Wealden Continent going down. I did not hear what you settled at the Council; I was quite wearied out and bewildered. I find Smith, of Jordan Hill, has a much worse opinion of R. Chambers's book than even I have. Chambers has piqued me a little ('Ancient Sea Margins, 1848.' The words quoted by my father should be "the mobility of the land was an ascendant idea."); he says I 'propound' and 'profess my belief' that Glen Roy is marine, and that the idea was accepted because the 'mobility of the land was the ascendant idea of the day.' He adds some very faint UPPER lines in Glen Spean (seen, by the way, by Agassiz), and has shown that Milne and Kemp are right in there being horizontal aqueous markings (NOT at coincident levels with those of Glen Roy) in other parts of Scotland at great heights, and he adds several other cases.
This is the whole of his addition to the data. He not only takes my line of argument from the buttresses and terraces below the lower shelf and some other arguments (without acknowledgment), but he sneers at all his predecessors not having perceived the importance of the short portions of lines intermediate between the chief ones in Glen Roy; whereas I commence the description of them with saying, that 'perceiving their importance, I examined them with scrupulous care,' and expatiate at considerable length on them. I have indirectly told him I do not think he has quite claims to consider that he alone (which he pretty directly asserts) has solved the problem of Glen Roy. With respect to the terraces at lower levels coincident in height all round Scotland and England, I am inclined to believe he shows some little probability of there being some leading ones coincident, but much more exact evidence is required. Would you believe it credible? he advances as a probable solution to account for the rise of Great Britain that in some great ocean one-twentieth of the bottom of the whole aqueous surface of the globe has sunk in (he does not say where he puts it) for a thickness of half a mile, and this he has calculated would make an apparent rise of 130 feet."
CHARLES DARWIN TO C. LYELL. Down [June, 1848]. My dear Lyell, Out of justice to Chambers I must trouble you with one line to say, as far as I am personally concerned in Glen Roy, he has made the amende honorable, and pleads guilty through inadvertency of taking my two lines of arguments and facts without acknowledgment. He concluded by saying he "came to the same point by an independent course of inquiry, which in a small degree excuses this inadvertency." His letter altogether shows a very good disposition, and says he is "much gratified with the MEASURED approbation which you bestow, etc." I am heartily glad I was able to say in truth that I thought he had done good service in calling more attention to the subject of the terraces. He protests it is unfair to call the sinking of the sea his theory, for that he with care always speaks of mere change of level, and this is quite true; but the one section in which he shows how he conceives the sea might sink is so astonishing, that I believe it will with others, as with me, more than counterbalance his previous caution. I hope that you may think better of the book than I do. Yours most truly, C. DARWIN. CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. October 6th, 1848.
Some years afterwards, the voyage of the 'Beagle' having been made in the interim, talking over old times with him, I reverted to this circumstance, and asked if he remembered it. 'Oh, yes,' (he said,) 'I remember it well; and I was selfish enough to keep the specimen, when you were collecting materials for a Fauna of Cambridgeshire, and for a local museum in the Philosophical Society.' He followed this up with some remarks on the pettiness of collectors, who aimed at nothing beyond filling their cabinets with rare things.") At present, it would not do to give mere specific names; but I think Zoologists might open the road to the omission, by referring to good systematic writers instead of to first describers. Botany, I fancy, has not suffered so much as Zoology from mere NAMING; the characters, fortunately, are more obscure. Have you ever thought on this point? Why should Naturalists append their own names to new species, when Mineralogists and Chemists do not do so to new substances? When you write to Falconer pray remember me affectionately to him. I grieve most sincerely to hear that he has been ill, my dear Hooker, God bless you, and fare you well. Your sincere friend, C. DARWIN.
CHARLES DARWIN TO HUGH STRICKLAND. (Hugh Edwin Strickland, M.A., F.R.S., was born 2nd of March, 1811, and educated at Rugby, under Arnold, and at Oriel College, Oxford. In 1835 and 1836 he travelled through Europe to the Levant with W.J. Hamilton, the geologist, wintering in Asia Minor. In 1841 he brought the subject of Natural History Nomenclature before the British Association, and prepared the Code of Rules for Zoological Nomenclature, now known by his name--the principles of which are very generally adopted. In 1843 he was one of the founders (if not the original projector) of the Ray Society. In 1845 he married the second daughter of Sir William Jardine, Bart. In 1850 he was appointed, in consequence of Buckland's illness, Deputy Reader in Geology at Oxford. His promising career was suddenly cut short on September 14, 1853, when, while geologizing in a railway cutting between Retford and Gainsborough, he was run over by a train and instantly killed. A memoir of him and a reprint of his principal contributions to journals was published by Sir William Jardine in 1858; but he was also the author of 'The Dodo and its Kindred' (1848); 'Bibliographia Zoologiae' (the latter in conjunction with Louis Agassiz, and issued by the Ray Society); 'Ornithological Synonyms' (one volume only published, and that posthumously). A catalogue of his ornithological collection, given by his widow to the University of Cambridge, was compiled by Mr. Salvin, and published in 1882. (I am indebted to Prof. Newton for the above note.)) Down, January 29th [1849].
I have been led of late to reflect much on the subject of naming, and I have come to a fixed opinion that the plan of the first describer's name, being appended for perpetuity to a species, had been the greatest curse to Natural History. Some months since, I wrote out the enclosed badly drawn-up paper, thinking that perhaps I would agitate the subject; but the fit has passed, and I do not suppose I ever shall; I send it you for the CHANCE of your caring to see my notions. I have been surprised to find in conversation that several naturalists were of nearly my way of thinking. I feel sure as long as species-mongers have their vanity tickled by seeing their own names appended to a species, because they miserably described it in two or three lines, we shall have the same VAST amount of bad work as at present, and which is enough to dishearten any man who is willing to work out any branch with care and time. I find every genus of Cirripedia has half-a-dozen names, and not one careful description of any one species in any one genus. I do not believe that this would have been the case if each man knew that the memory of his own name depended on his doing his work well, and not upon merely appending a name with a few wretched lines indicating only a few prominent external characters. But I will not weary you with any longer tirade. Read my paper or NOT, just as you like, and return it whenever you please.
Yours most sincerely, C. DARWIN. HUGH STRICKLAND TO CHARLES DARWIN. The Lodge, Tewkesbury, January 31st, 1849. ...I have next to notice your second objection--that retaining the name of the FIRST describer in perpetuum along with that of the species, is a premium on hasty and careless work. This is quite a different question from that of the law of priority itself, and it never occurred to me before, though it seems highly probable that the general recognition of that law may produce such a result. We must try to counteract this evil in some other way. The object of appending the name of a man to the name of a species is not to gratify the vanity of the man, but to indicate more precisely the species. Sometimes two men will, by accident, give the same name (independently) to two species of the same genus. More frequently a later author will misapply the specific name of an older one. Thus the Helix putris of Montagu is not H. putris of Linnaeus, though Montague supposed it to be so. In such a case we cannot define the species by Helix putris alone, but must append the name of the author whom we quote. But when a species has never borne but one name (as Corvus frugilegus), and no other species of Corvus has borne the same name, it is, of course, unnecessary to add the author's name. Yet even here I like the form Corvus frugilegus, Linn., as it reminds us that this is one of the old species, long known, and to be found in the 'Systema Naturae,' etc. I fear, therefore, that (at least until our nomenclature is more definitely settled) it will be impossible to indicate species with scientific accuracy, without adding the name of their first author. You may, indeed, do it as you propose, by saying in Lam. An. Invert., etc., but then this would be incompatible with the law of priority, for where Lamarck has violated that low, one cannot adopt his name. It is, nevertheless, highly conducive to accurate indication to append to the (oldest) specific name ONE good reference to a standard work, especially to a FIGURE, with an accompanying synonym if necessary. This method may be cumbrous, but cumbrousness is a far less evil than uncertainty.
It, moreover, seems hardly possible to carry out the PRIORITY principle, without the historical aid afforded by appending the author's name to the specific one. If I, a PRIORITY MAN, called a species C.D., it implies that C.D. is the oldest name that I know of; but in order that you and others may judge of the propriety of that name, you must ascertain when, and by whom, the name was first coined. Now, if to the specific name C.D., I append the name A.B., of its first describer, I at once furnish you with the clue to the dates when, and the book in which, this description was given, and I thus assist you in determining whether C.D. be really the oldest, and therefore the correct, designation. I do, however, admit that the priority principle (excellent as it is) has a tendency, when the author's name is added, to encourage vanity and slovenly work. I think, however, that much might be done to discourage those obscure and unsatisfactory definitions of which you so justly complain, by WRITING DOWN the practice. Let the better disposed naturalists combine to make a formal protest against all vague, loose, and inadequate definitions of (supposed) new species. Let a committee (say of the British Association) be appointed to prepare a sort of CLASS LIST of the various modern works in which new species are described, arranged in order of merit. The lowest class would contain the worst examples of the kind, and their authors would thus be exposed to the obloquy which they deserve, and be gibbeted in terrorem for the edification of those who may come after.
I am, in truth, GREATLY obliged to you for your long, most interesting, and clear letter, and the Report. I will consider your arguments, which are of the greatest weight, but I confess I cannot yet bring myself to reject very WELL-KNOWN names, not in ONE country, but over the world, for obscure ones,--simply on the ground that I do not believe I should be followed. Pray believe that I should break the law of priority only in rare cases; will you read the enclosed (and return it), and tell me whether it does not stagger you? (N.B. I PROMISE that I will not give you any more trouble.) I want simple answers, and not for you to waste your time in reasons; I am curious for your answer in regard to Balanus. I put the case of Otion, etc., to W. Thompson, who is fierce for the law of priority, and he gave it up in such well-known names. I am in a perfect maze of doubt on nomenclature. In not one large genus of Cirripedia has ANY ONE species been correctly defined; it is pure guesswork (being guided by range and commonness and habits) to recognise any species: thus I can make out, from plates or descriptions, hardly any of the British sessile cirripedes.
I cannot bear to give new names to all the species, and yet I shall perhaps do wrong to attach old names by little better than guess; I cannot at present tell the least which of two species all writers have meant by the common Anatifera laevis; I have, therefore, given that name to the one which is rather the commonest. Literally, not one species is properly defined; not one naturalist has ever taken the trouble to open the shell of any species to describe it scientifically, and yet all the genera have half-a-dozen synonyms. For ARGUMENT'S sake, suppose I do my work thoroughly well, any one who happens to have the original specimens named, I will say by Chenu, who has figured and named hundreds of species, will be able to upset all my names according to the law of priority (for he may maintain his descriptions are sufficient), do you think it advantageous to science that this should be done: I think not, and that convenience and high merit (here put as mere argument) had better come into some play. The subject is heart-breaking.
I hope you will occasionally turn in your mind my argument of the evil done by the "mihi" attached to specific names; I can most clearly see the EXCESSIVE evil it has caused; in mineralogy I have myself found there is no rage to merely name; a person does not take up the subject without he intends to work it out, as he knows that his ONLY claim to merit rests on his work being ably done, and has no relation whatever to NAMING. I give up one point, and grant that reference to first describer's name should be given in all systematic works, but I think something would be gained if a reference was given without the author's name being actually appended as part of the binomial name, and I think, except in systematic works, a reference, such as I propose, would damp vanity much. I think a very wrong spirit runs through all Natural History, as if some merit was due to a man for merely naming and defining a species; I think scarcely any, or none, is due; if he works out MINUTELY and anatomically any one species, or systematically a whole group, credit is due, but I must think the mere defining a species is nothing, and that no INJUSTICE is done him if it be overlooked, though a great inconvenience to Natural History is thus caused. I do not think more credit is due to a man for defining a species, than to a carpenter for making a box. But I am foolish and rabid against species-mongers, or rather against their vanity; it is useful and necessary work which must be done; but they act as if they had actually made the species, and it was their own property.
I have again to thank you cordially for your letter. Your remarks shall fructify to some extent, and I will try to be more faithful to rigid virtue and priority; but as for calling Balanus "Lepas" (which I did not think of), I cannot do it, my pen won't write it--it is IMPOSSIBLE. I have great hopes some of my difficulties will disappear, owing to wrong dates in Agassiz, and to my having to run several genera into one, for I have as yet gone, in but few cases, to original sources. With respect to adopting my own notions in my Cirripedia book, I should not like to do so without I found others approved, and in some public way,--nor, indeed, is it well adapted, as I can never recognise a species without I have the original specimen, which, fortunately, I have in many cases in the British Museum. Thus far I mean to adopt my notion, as never putting mihi or "Darwin" after my own species, and in the anatomical text giving no authors' names at all, as the systematic Part will serve for those who want to know the History of a species as far as I can imperfectly work it out... CHARLES DARWIN TO J.D. HOOKER. [The Lodge, Malvern, March 28th, 1849.] My dear Hooker, Your letter of the 13th of October has remained unanswered till this day! What an ungrateful return for a letter which interested me so much, and which contained so much and curious information. But I have had a bad winter.
On the 13th of November, my poor dear father died, and no one who did not know him would believe that a man above eighty-three years old could have retained so tender and affectionate a disposition, with all his sagacity unclouded to the last. I was at the time so unwell, that I was unable to travel, which added to my misery. Indeed, all this winter I have been bad enough...and my nervous system began to be affected, so that my hands trembled, and head was often swimming. I was not able to do anything one day out of three, and was altogether too dispirited to write to you, or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh. Having heard, accidentally, of two persons who had received much benefit from the water-cure, I got Dr. Gully's book, and made further enquiries, and at last started here, with wife, children, and all our servants. We have taken a house for two months, and have been here a fortnight. I am already a little stronger...Dr. Gully feels pretty sure he can do me good, which most certainly the regular doctors could not...I feel certain that the water-cure is no quackery. How I shall enjoy getting back to Down with renovated health, if such is to be my good fortune, and resuming the beloved Barnacles. Now I hope that you will forgive me for my negligence in not having sooner answered your letter. I was uncommonly interested by the sketch you give of your intended grand expedition, from which I suppose you will soon be returning. How earnestly I hope that it may prove in every way successful...
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.