Beschreibung:

DARWIN, CHARLES. Letter signed ("Charles Darwin") to Sir W. Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., the text apparently in the hand of Emma Darwin, his wife, Down, Bromley, Kent, 26 August l867. 4 pages, 8vo, on imprinted stationey, address panel from the original envelope pasted beneath signature on last page, "I AM AN ADVOCATE FOR MUTABILITY" [OF SPECIES] A good letter to Dawkins (l837-l929) an eminent paleontologist and geologist, who had furnished Darwin with scientific information in connection with Darwin's soon-to-be-published The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (l868). "I am much obliged for the present of your two papers. I have not had time as yet to more than glance at them & refer to the case of the Galloway [a breed of cattle]. I had heard something of this latter case, but not in such detail. I have nearly finished printing a book on the Variation of domestic animals; but I am sorry to say that the Chapter on Cattle is already printed....I have been interested by all your previous work, & I am sure I shall be so in an especial degree [in your work on] the descent of the species of Rhinocerous. [Dawkins had published several key papers on the subject in l866; an abstract of one accompanies the letter.] "As far as your plan of ascertaining the amount of difference between existing & extinct forms, it seems to me very good; & I feel sure that the attempt will be valuable...Permit me to add that your letter has pleased me much, for from your previous papers I supposed that you considered species immutable, & as I am an advocate for mutability, the opinion of so able a judge as yourself was a great discouragement to me...."