“Yours faithfully,
“Charles Darwin.
“I daresay Mr. Wallace or Bates would remember the statement of some birds shaking their heads to which I refer.”
The statement about the turkeys evidently refers to Stainton’s experiment with young birds of this kind, which immediately devoured numerous protectively coloured moths, but, after seizing, invariably rejected, a conspicuous white species (Spilosoma menthastri). It was Belt’s ducks which shook their heads after tasting a very conspicuous Nicaraguan frog. Darwin wished to show by this evidence that there was no instinctive knowledge such as would have saved the birds from an evidently unpleasant experience.
The last letter, deeply interesting both on its own account and because it was written so near the end of Darwin’s life, was a reply to one from Meldola in which he had said that the publishers were complaining that the list of subscribers was disappointing, and that they had expressed the wish that Mr. Darwin could see his way to writing a much longer introductory notice than he had done.
“Feb. 2nd [1882].
“Down.
“Dear Mr. Meldola,—I am very sorry that I can add nothing to my very brief notice without reading again Weismann’s work and getting up the whole subject by reading my own and other books, and for so much labour I have not strength. I have now been working at other subjects for some years, and when a man grows as old as I am, it is a great wrench to his brain to go back to old and half-forgotten subjects. You would not readily believe how often I am asked questions of all kinds, and quite lately I have had to give up much time to do a work, not at all concerning myself, but which I did not like to refuse. I must however somewhere draw the line, or my life will be a misery to me.
“I have read your Preface and it seems to me excellent. I am sorry in many ways, including the honour of England as a scientific country, that your translation has as yet sold badly. Does the publisher or do you lose by it? If the publisher, though I should be sorry for him, yet it is in the way of business; but if you yourself lose by it, I earnestly beg you to allow me to subscribe a trifle, viz. ten guineas, towards the expense of this work, which you have undertaken on public grounds.
“Pray believe me, yours very faithfully,
“Ch. Darwin.”
Darwin’s generous offer, although gratefully declined, was a warm encouragement in the laborious, and in some respects thankless, task of translator and editor—a task which, in the case of the English edition of Weismann’s “Studies in the Theory of Descent,” was carried out in so admirable a manner.