I have been led lately from experiments (not published) on dimorphism to reflect much on sterility from hybridism, and partially to change the opinion given in "Origin." I have now letters out enquiring on the following point, implied in the experiment, which seems to me well worth trying, but too laborious ever to be attempted. I would ask every pigeon and fowl fancier whether they have ever observed, in the same breed, a cock A paired to a hen B which did not produce young. Then I would get cock A and match it to a hen of its nearest blood; and hen B to its nearest blood. I would then match the offspring of A (viz., a, b, c, d, e) to the offspring of B (viz., f, g, h, i, j), and all those children which were fertile together should be destroyed until I found one—say a, which was not quite fertile with—say, i. Then a and i should be preserved and paired with their parents A and B, so as to try and get two families which would not unite together; but the members WITHIN each family being fertile together. This would probably be quite hopeless; but he who could effect this would, I believe, solve the problem of sterility from hybridism. If you should ever hear of individual fowls or pigeons which are sterile together, I should be very grateful to hear of the case. It is a parallel case to those recorded of a man not impotent long living with a woman who remained childless; the husband died, and the woman married again and had plenty of children. Apparently (by no means certainly) this first man and woman were dissimilar in their sexual organisation. I conceive it possible that their offspring (if both had married again and both had children) would be sexually dissimilar, like their parents, or sterile together. Pray forgive my dreadful writing; I have been very unwell all day, and have no strength to re-write this scrawl. I am working slowly on, and I suppose in three or four months shall be ready.
I am sure I do not know whether any human being could understand or read this shameful scrawl.
LETTER 154. TO T.H. HUXLEY. Down, December, 28th {1862}.
I return enclosed: if you write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1. Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he made all things." But Moollah No. 2 won the day by pointing out that his God is "so wise that he makes all things make themselves.") All that I said about the little book (154/2. The six "Lectures to Working Men," published in six pamphlets and in book-form in 1863. Mr. Huxley considered that Mr. Darwin's argument required the production by man's selection of breeds which should be mutually infertile, and thus resemble distinct species physiologically as well as morphologically.) is strictly my opinion; it is in every way excellent, and cannot fail to do good the wider it is circulated. Whether it is worth your while to give up time to it is another question for you alone to decide; that it will do good for the subject is beyond all question. I do not think a dunce exists who could not understand it, and that is a bold saying after the extent to which I have been misunderstood. I did not understand what you required about sterility: assuredly the facts given do not go nearly so far. We differ so much that it is no use arguing. To get the degree of sterility you expect in recently formed varieties seems to me simply hopeless. It seems to me almost like those naturalists who declare they will never believe that one species turns into another till they see every stage in process.
I have heard from Tegetmeier, and have given him the result of my crosses of the birds which he proposes to try, and have told him how alone I think the experiment could be tried with the faintest hope of success—namely, to get, if possible, a case of two birds which when paired were unproductive, yet neither impotent. For instance, I had this morning a letter with a case of a Hereford heifer, which seemed to be, after repeated trials, sterile with one particular and far from impotent bull, but not with another bull. But it is too long a story—it is to attempt to make two strains, both fertile, and yet sterile when one of one strain is crossed with one of the other strain. But the difficulty...would be beyond calculation. As far as I see, Tegetmeier's plan would simply test whether two existing breeds are now in any slight degree sterile; which has already been largely tested: not that I dispute the good of re-testing.
LETTER 155. TO HUGH FALCONER.
(155/1. The original letter is dated "December 10th," but this must, we think, be a slip of the pen for January 10th. It contains a reference to No. VI. of the "Lectures to Working Men" which, as Mr. Leonard Huxley is good enough to inform us, was not delivered until December 15th, and therefore could not have been seen by Mr. Darwin on December 10th. The change of date makes comprehensible the reference to Falconer's paper "On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions bordering the Gulf of Mexico (E. Columbi, Falc.)," which appeared in the January number of the "Natural History Review." It is true that he had seen advanced sheets of Falconer's paper ("Life and Letters," II., page 389), but the reference here is to the complete paper.
In the present volume we have thought it right to give some expression to the attitude of Darwin towards Owen. Professor Owen's biographer has clearly felt the difficulty of making a statement on Owen's attitude towards Darwinism, and has ("Life of Sir Richard Owen," Volume II., page 92) been driven to adopt the severe indictment contained in the "Origin of Species," Edition VI., page xviii. Darwin was by no means alone in his distrust of Owen; and to omit altogether a reference to the conduct which led up to the isolation of Owen among his former friends and colleagues would be to omit a part of the history of science of the day. And since we cannot omit to notice Darwin's point of view, it seems right to give the facts of a typical case illustrating the feeling with which he regarded Owen. This is all the more necessary since the recently published biography of Sir R. Owen gives no hint, as far as we are aware, of even a difference of opinion with other scientific men.
The account which Falconer gives in the above-mentioned paper in the "Nat. Hist. Review" (January, 1863) would be amusing if the matter were less serious. In 1857 Falconer described ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." XIII.) a new species of fossil elephant from America, to which he gave the name Elephas Columbi, a designation which was recognised and adopted by Continental writers. In 1858 (Brit. Assoc. Leeds) Owen made use of the name "Elephas texianus," Blake" for the species which Falconer had previously named E. Columbi, but without referring to Falconer's determination; he gave no authority, "thus by the established usage in zoology producing it as his own." In 1861 Owen in his Palaeontology, 2nd edition, 1861, describes the elephant as E. texianus, Blake. To Mr. Blake's name is appended an asterisk which refers to a footnote to Bollaert's "Antiquities of S. America," 2nd edition. According to Falconer (page 46) no second edition of Bollaert had appeared at the time of writing (August, 1862), and in the first edition (1860) he was "unable to detect the occurrence of the name even, of E. texianus, anywhere throughout the volume"; though Bollaert mentions the fact that he had deposited, in the British Museum, the tooth of a fossil elephant from Texas.
In November, 1861, Blake wrote a paper in the "Geologist" in which the new elephant no longer bears his own name as authority, but is described as "Elephas texianus, Owen, E. Columbi, Falconer." Finally, in another paper the name of Owen is dropped and the elephant is once more his own. As Falconer remarks, "the usage of science does not countenance such accommodating arrangements, when the result is to prejudice a prior right."