I thank you for the honourable mention which you make of my works. Parts of the 'Descent of Man' must have appeared laughably weak to you: nevertheless, I have sent you a new edition just published. Thanking you for the profound interest and profit with which I have read your work. I remain,
My dear Sir, yours very faithfully, CH. DARWIN.
1875.
[The only work, not purely botanical, which occupied my father in the present year was the correction of the second edition of 'The Variation of Animals and Plants,' and on this he was engaged from the beginning of July till October 3rd. The rest of the year was taken up with his work on insectivorous plants, and on cross-fertilisation, as will be shown in a later chapter. The chief alterations in the second edition of 'Animals and Plants' are in the eleventh chapter on "Bud-variation and on certain anomalous modes of reproduction;" the chapter on Pangenesis "was also largely altered and remodelled." He mentions briefly some of the authors who have noticed the doctrine. Professor Delpino's 'Sulla Darwiniana Teoria della Pangenesi' (1869), an adverse but fair criticism, seems to have impressed him as valuable. Of another critique my father characteristically says ('Animals and Plants,' 2nd edition volume ii. page 350.), "Dr. Lionel Beale ('Nature,' May 11, 1871, page 26) sneers at the whole doctrine with much acerbity and some justice." He also points out that, in Mantegazza's 'Elementi di Igiene,' the theory of Pangenesis was clearly foreseen.
In connection with this subject, a letter of my father's to 'Nature' (April 27, 1871) should be mentioned. A paper by Mr. Galton had been read before the Royal Society (March 30, 1871) in which were described experiments, on intertransfusion of blood, designed to test the truth of the hypothesis of pangenesis. My father, while giving all due credit to Mr. Galton for his ingenious experiments, does not allow that pangenesis has "as yet received its death-blow, though from presenting so many vulnerable points its life is always in jeopardy."
He seems to have found the work of correcting very wearisome, for he wrote:--
"I have no news about myself, as I am merely slaving over the sickening work of preparing new editions. I wish I could get a touch of poor Lyell's feelings, that it was delightful to improve a sentence, like a painter improving a picture."
The feeling of effort or strain over this piece of work, is shown in a letter to Professor Haeckel:--
"What I shall do in future if I live, Heaven only knows; I ought perhaps to avoid general and large subjects, as too difficult for me with my advancing years, and I suppose enfeebled brain."
At the end of March, in this year, the portrait for which he was sitting to Mr. Ouless was finished. He felt the sittings a great fatigue, in spite of Mr. Ouless's considerate desire to spare him as far as was possible. In a letter to Sir J.D. Hooker he wrote, "I look a very venerable, acute, melancholy old dog; whether I really look so I do not know." The picture is in the possession of the family, and is known to many through M. Rajon's etching. Mr. Ouless's portrait is, in my opinion, the finest representation of my father that has been produced.
The following letter refers to the death of Sir Charles Lyell, which took place on February 22nd, 1875, in his seventy-eighth year.]
CHARLES DARWIN TO MISS BUCKLEY (NOW MRS. FISHER). (Mrs. Fisher acted as Secretary to Sir Charles Lyell.) Down, February 23, 1875.
My dear Miss Buckley,
I am grieved to hear of the death of my old and kind friend, though I knew that it could not be long delayed, and that it was a happy thing that his life should not have been prolonged, as I suppose that his mind would inevitably have suffered. I am glad that Lady Lyell (Lady Lyell died in 1873.) has been saved this terrible blow. His death makes me think of the time when I first saw him, and how full of sympathy and interest he was about what I could tell him of coral reefs and South America.