More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 2

You ask what I think about the gay-coloured females of Pieris. (443/1. See "Westminster Review," July, 1867, page 37; also Letter 440.) I believe I quite follow you in believing that the colours are wholly due to mimicry; and I further believe that the male is not brilliant from not having received through inheritance colour from the female, and from not himself having varied; in short, that he has not been influenced by selection.

I can make no answer with respect to the elephants. With respect to the female reindeer, I have hitherto looked at the horns simply as the consequence of inheritance not having been limited by sex.

Your idea about colour being concentrated in the smaller males seems good, and I presume that you will not object to my giving it as your suggestion.

LETTER 444. TO J. JENNER WEIR. Down, May 7th {1868}.

I have now to thank you for no less than four letters! You are so kind that I will not apologise for the trouble I cause you; but it has lately occurred to me that you ought to publish a paper or book on the habits of the birds which you have so carefully observed. But should you do this, I do not think that my giving some of the facts for a special object would much injure the novelty of your work. There is such a multitude of points in these last letters that I hardly know what to touch upon. Thanks about the instinct of nidification, and for your answers on many points. I am glad to hear reports about the ferocious female bullfinch. I hope you will have another try in colouring males. I have now finished lepidoptera, and have used your facts about caterpillars, and as a caution the case of the yellow-underwings. I have now begun on fishes, and by comparing different classes of facts my views are getting a little more decided. In about a fortnight or three weeks I shall come to birds, and then I dare say that I shall be extra troublesome. I will now enclose a few queries for the mere chance of your being able to answer some of them, and I think it will save you trouble if I write them on a separate slip, and then you can sometimes answer by a mere "no" or "yes."

Your last letter on male pigeons and linnets has interested me much, for the precise facts which you have given me on display are of the utmost value for my work. I have written to Mr. Bartlett on Gallinaceae, but I dare say I shall not get an answer. I had heard before, but am glad to have confirmation about the ruffs being the most numerous. I am greatly obliged to your brother for sending out circulars. I have not heard from him as yet. I want to ask him whether he has ever observed when several male pigeons are courting one female that the latter decides with which male she will pair. The story about the black mark on the lambs must be a hoax. The inaccuracy of many persons is wonderful. I should like to tell you a story, but it is too long, about beans growing on the wrong side of the pod during certain years.

Queries:

Does any female bird regularly sing?

Do you know any case of both sexes, more especially of the female, {being} more brightly coloured whilst young than when come to maturity and fit to breed? An imaginary instance would be if the female kingfisher (or male) became dull coloured when adult.

Do you know whether the male and female wild canary bird differ in plumage (though I believe I could find this out for myself), and do any of the domestic breeds differ sexually?

Do you know any gallinaceous bird in which the female has well developed spurs?

It is very odd that my memory should fail me, but I cannot remember whether, in accordance with your views, the wing of Gallus bankiva (or Game-Cock, which is so like the wild) is ornamental when he opens and scrapes it before the female. I fear it is not; but though I have often looked at wing of the wild and tame bird, I cannot call to mind the exact colours. What a number of points you have attended to; I did not know that you were a horticulturist. I have often marvelled at the different growth of the flowering and creeping branches of the ivy; but had no idea that they kept their character when propagated by cuttings. There is a S. American genus (name forgotten just now) which differs in an analogous manner but even greater degree, but it is difficult to cultivate in our hot-house. I have tried and failed.

LETTER 445. TO J. JENNER WEIR. Down, May 30th {1868}.

I am glad to hear your opinion on the nest-making instinct, for I am Tory enough not to like to give up all old beliefs. Wallace's view (445/1. See Letter 440, etc.) is also opposed to a great mass of analogical facts. The cases which you mention of suddenly reacquired wildness seem curious. I have also to thank you for a previous valuable letter. With respect to spurs on female Gallinaceae, I applied to Mr. Blyth, who has wonderful systematic knowledge, and he tells me that the female Pavo muticus and Fire-back pheasants are spurred. From various interruptions I get on very slowly with my Bird MS., but have already often and often referred to your volume of letters, and have used various facts, and shall use many more. And now I am ashamed to say that I have more questions to ask; but I forget — you told me not to apologise.

1. In your letter of April 14th you mention the case of about twenty birds which seemed to listen with much interest to an excellent piping bullfinch. (445/2. Quoted in the "Descent of Man" (1901), page 564. "A bullfinch which had been taught to pipe a German waltz...when this bird was first introduced into a room where other birds were kept and he began to sing, all the others, consisting of about twenty linnets and canaries, ranged themselves on the nearest side of their cages, and listened with the greatest interest to the new performer.") What kind of birds were these twenty?

2. Is it true, as often stated, that a bird reared by foster-parents, and who has never heard the song of its own species, imitates to a certain extent the song of the species which it may be in the habit of hearing?

Now for a more troublesome point. I find it very necessary to make out relation of immature plumage to adult plumage, both when the sexes differ and are alike in the adult state. Therefore, I want much to learn about the first plumage (answering, for instance, to the speckled state of the robin before it acquires the red breast) of the several varieties of the canary. Can you help me? What is the character or colour of the first plumage of bright yellow or mealy canaries which breed true to these tints? So with the mottled-brown canaries, for I believe that there are breeds which always come brown and mottled. Lastly, in the "prize-canaries," which have black wing- and tail-feathers during their first (?) plumage, what colours are the wings and tails after the first (?) moult or when adult? I should be particularly glad to learn this. Heaven have mercy on you, for it is clear that I have none. I am going to investigate this same point with all the breeds of fowls, as Mr. Tegetmeier will procure for me young birds, about two months old, of all the breeds.

In the course of this next month I hope you will come down here on the Saturday and stay over the Sunday. Some months ago Mr. Bates said he would pay me a visit during June, and I have thought it would be pleasanter for you to come here when I can get him, so that you would have a companion if I get knocked up, as is sadly too often my bad habit and great misfortune.

Did you ever hear of the existence of any sub-breed of the canary in which the male differs in plumage from the female?

LETTER 446. TO F. MULLER. Down, June 3rd {1868}.

Your letter of April 22nd has much interested me. I am delighted that you approve of my book, for I value your opinion more than that of almost any one. I have yet hopes that you will think well of pangenesis. I feel sure that our minds are somewhat alike, and I find it a great relief to have some definite, though hypothetical view, when I reflect on the wonderful transformations of animals, the re-growth of parts, and especially the direct action of pollen on the mother form, etc. It often appears to me almost certain that the characters of the parents are "photographed" on the child, only by means of material atoms derived from each cell in both parents, and developed in the child. I am sorry about the mistake in regard to Leptotes. (446/1. See "Animals and Plants," Edition I., Volume II., page 134, where it is stated that Oncidium is fertile with Leptotes, a mistake corrected in the 2nd edition.) I daresay it was my fault, yet I took pains to avoid such blunders. Many thanks for all the curious facts about the unequal number of the sexes in crustacea, but the more I investigate this subject the deeper I sink in doubt and difficulty. Thanks, also, for the confirmation of the rivalry of Cicadae. (446/2. See "Descent of Man," Edition I., Volume I., page 351, for F. Muller's observations; and for a reference to Landois' paper.) I have often reflected with surprise on the diversity of the means for producing music with insects, and still more with birds. We thus get a high idea of the importance of song in the animal kingdom. Please to tell me where I can find any account of the auditory organs in the orthoptera? Your facts are quite new to me. Scudder has described an annectant insect in Devonian strata, furnished with a stridulating apparatus. (446/3. The insect is no doubt Xenoneura antiquorum, from the Devonian rocks of New Brunswick. Scudder compared a peculiar feature in the wing of this species to the stridulating apparatus of the Locustariae, but afterwards stated that he had been led astray in his original description, and that there was no evidence in support of the comparison with a stridulating organ. See the "Devonian Insects of New Brunswick," reprinted in S.H. Scudder's "Fossil Insects of N. America," Volume I., page 179, New York, 1890.) I believe he is to be trusted, and if so the apparatus is of astonishing antiquity. After reading Landois' paper I have been working at the stridulating organ in the lamellicorn beetles, in expectation of finding it sexual, but I have only found it as yet in two cases, and in these it was equally developed in both sexes. I wish you would look at any of your common lamellicorns and take hold of both males and females and observe whether they make the squeaking or grating noise equally. If they do not, you could perhaps send me a male and female in a light little box. How curious it is that there should be a special organ for an object apparently so unimportant as squeaking. Here is another point: have you any Toucans? if so, ask any trustworthy hunter whether the beaks of the males, or of both sexes, are more brightly coloured during the breeding season than at other times of the year? I have also to thank you for a previous letter of April 3rd, with some interesting facts on the variation of maize, the sterility of Bignonia and on conspicuous seeds. Heaven knows whether I shall ever live to make use of half the valuable facts which you have communicated to me...

LETTER 447. TO J. JENNER WEIR. Down, June 18th {1868}.

Many thanks. I am glad that you mentioned the linnet, for I had much difficulty in persuading myself that the crimson breast could be due to change in the old feathers, as the books say. I am glad to hear of the retribution of the wicked old she-bullfinch. You remember telling me how many Weirs and Jenners have been naturalists; now this morning I have been putting together all my references about one bird of a pair being killed, and a new mate being soon found; you, Jenner Weir, have given me some most striking cases with starlings; Dr. Jenner gives the most curious case of all in "Philosophical Transactions" (447/1. "Phil. Trans." 1824.), and a Mr. Weir gives the next most striking in Macgillivray. (447/2. Macgillivray's "History of British Birds," Volume I., page 570. See "Descent of Man" (1901), page 621.) Now, is this not odd? Pray remember how very glad we shall be to see you here whenever you can come.

Did some ancient progenitor of the Weirs and Jenners puzzle his brains about the mating of birds, and has the question become indelibly fixed in all your minds?

LETTER 448. TO A.R. WALLACE. August 19th {1868}.

I had become, before my nine weeks' horrid interruption of all work, extremely interested in sexual selection, and was making fair progress. In truth it has vexed me much to find that the farther I get on the more I differ from you about the females being dull-coloured for protection. I can now hardly express myself as strongly, even, as in the "Origin." This has much decreased the pleasure of my work. In the course of September, if I can get at all stronger, I hope to get Mr. J. Jenner Weir (who has been wonderfully kind in giving me information) to pay me a visit, and I will then write for the chance of your being able to come, and I hope bring with you Mrs. Wallace. If I could get several of you together it would be less dull for you, for of late I have found it impossible to talk with any human being for more than half an hour, except on extraordinary good days.

(448/1. On September 16th Darwin wrote to Wallace on the same subject: — )

You will be pleased to hear that I am undergoing severe distress about protection and sexual selection; this morning I oscillated with joy towards you; this evening I have swung back to the old position, out of which I fear I shall never get.

LETTER 449. TO A.R. WALLACE.

(449/1. From "Life and Letters," Volume III., page 123.)

Down, September 23rd {1868}.

I am very much obliged for all your trouble in writing me your long letter, which I will keep by me and ponder over. To answer it would require at least 200 folio pages! If you could see how often I have rewritten some pages you would know how anxious I am to arrive as near as I can to the truth. I lay great stress on what I know takes place under domestication; I think we start with different fundamental notions on inheritance. I find it is most difficult, but not, I think, impossible to see how, for instance, a few red feathers appearing on the head of a male bird, and which are at first transmitted to both sexes, would come to be transmitted to males alone. It is not enough that females should be produced from the males with red feathers, which should be destitute of red feathers; but these females must have a latent tendency to produce such feathers, otherwise they would cause deterioration in the red head-feathers of their male offspring. Such latent tendency would be shown by their producing the red feathers when old, or diseased in their ovaria. But I have no difficulty in making the whole head red if the few red feathers in the male from the first tended to be sexually transmitted. I am quite willing to admit that the female may have been modified, either at the same time or subsequently, for protection by the accumulation of variations limited in their transmission to the female sex. I owe to your writings the consideration of this latter point. But I cannot yet persuade myself that females alone have often been modified for protection. Should you grudge the trouble briefly to tell me, whether you believe that the plainer head and less bright colours of female chaffinch, the less red on the head and less clean colours of female goldfinch, the much less red on the breast of the female bullfinch, the paler crest of golden-crested wren, etc., have been acquired by them for protection? I cannot think so, any more than I can that the considerable differences between female and male house-sparrow, or much greater brightness of male Parus caeruleus (both of which build under cover) than of female Parus, are related to protection. I even misdoubt much whether the less blackness of female blackbird is for protection.

Again, can you give me reasons for believing that the moderate differences between the female pheasant, the female Gallus bankiva, the female of black grouse, the pea-hen, the female partridge, have all special references to protection under slightly different conditions? I, of course, admit that they are all protected by dull colours, derived, as I think, from some dull-ground progenitor; and I account partly for their difference by partial transference of colour from the male, and by other means too long to specify; but I earnestly wish to see reason to believe that each is specially adapted for concealment to its environment.

I grieve to differ from you, and it actually terrifies me and makes me constantly distrust myself. I fear we shall never quite understand each other. I value the cases of bright-coloured, incubating male fisher, and brilliant female butterflies, solely as showing that one sex may be made brilliant without any necessary transference of beauty to the other sex; for in these cases I cannot suppose that beauty in the other sex was checked by selection.

I fear this letter will trouble you to read it. A very short answer about your belief in regard to the female finches and Gallinaceae would suffice.

LETTER 450. A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN. 9, St. Mark's Crescent, N.W., September 27th, 1868.

Your view seems to be that variations occurring in one sex are transmitted either to that sex exclusively or to both sexes equally, or more rarely partially transferred. But we have every gradation of sexual colours, from total dissimilarity to perfect identity. If this is explained solely by the laws of inheritance, then the colours of one or other sex will be always (in relation to the environment) a matter of chance. I cannot think this. I think selection more powerful than laws of inheritance, of which it makes use, as shown by cases of two, three or four forms of female butterflies, all of which have, I have little doubt, been specialised for protection.

To answer your first question is most difficult, if not impossible, because we have no sufficient evidence in individual cases of slight sexual difference, to determine whether the male alone has acquired his superior brightness by sexual selection, or the female been made duller by need of protection, or whether the two causes have acted. Many of the sexual differences of existing species may be inherited differences from parent forms, which existed under different conditions and had greater or less need of protection.

I think I admitted before, the general tendency (probably) of males to acquire brighter tints. Yet this cannot be universal, for many female birds and quadrupeds have equally bright tints.

To your second question I can reply more decidedly. I do think the females of the Gallinaceae you mention have been modified or been prevented from acquiring the brighter plumage of the male, by need of protection. I know that the Gallus bankiva frequents drier and more open situations than the pea-hen of Java, which is found among grassy and leafy vegetation, corresponding with the colours of the two. So the Argus pheasant, male and female, are, I feel sure, protected by their tints corresponding to the dead leaves of the lofty forest in which they dwell, and the female of the gorgeous fire-back pheasant Lophura viellottii is of a very similar rich brown colour.

I do not, however, at all think the question can be settled by individual cases, but by only large masses of facts. The colours of the mass of female birds seem to me strictly analogous to the colours of both sexes of snipes, woodcocks, plovers, etc., which are undoubtedly protective.

Now, supposing, on your view, that the colours of a male bird become more and more brilliant by sexual selection, and a good deal of that colour is transmitted to the female till it becomes positively injurious to her during incubation, and the race is in danger of extinction; do you not think that all the females who had acquired less of the male's bright colours, or who themselves varied in a protective direction, would be preserved, and that thus a good protective colouring would soon be acquired?

If you admit that this could occur, and can show no good reason why it should not often occur, then we no longer differ, for this is the main point of my view.

Have you ever thought of the red wax-tips of the Bombycilla beautifully imitating the red fructification of lichens used in the nest, and therefore the FEMALES have it too? Yet this is a very sexual-looking character.

If sexes have been differentiated entirely by sexual selection the females can have no relation to environment. But in groups when both sexes require protection during feeding or repose, as snipes, woodcock, ptarmigan, desert birds and animals, green forest birds, etc., arctic birds of prey, and animals, then both sexes are modified for protection. Why should that power entirely cease to act when sexual differentiation exists and when the female requires protection, and why should the colour of so many FEMALE BIRDS seem to be protective, if it has not been made protective by selection.

It is contrary to the principles of "Origin of Species," that colour should have been produced in both sexes by sexual selection and never have been modified to bring the female into harmony with the environment. "Sexual selection is less rigorous than Natural Selection," and will therefore be subordinate to it.

I think the case of female Pieris pyrrha proves that females alone can be greatly modified for protection. (450/1. My latest views on this subject, with many new facts and arguments, will be found in the later editions of my "Darwinism," Chapter X. (A.R.W.))

LETTER 451. A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN.

(451/1. On October 4th, 1868, Mr. Wallace wrote again on the same subject without adding anything of importance to his arguments of September 27th. We give his final remarks: — )

October 4th, 1868.