THE ZOOLOGICAL RECORD 125 



thank you for your sympathy and too warm praise. 

 What labour you have bestowed on your part of the 

 Record / I ought to be ashamed to speak of my amount 

 of work. 



I thoroughly enjoyed the Sunday which you and the 

 others spent here, and I remain, dear Newton, 



Yours very sincerely, 



CH. DARWIN. 



The Record of Zoological Literature (the name was 

 changed with the seventh volume to the Zoological Record) 

 was started in 1864 by the late Dr. Albert Giinther, who 

 edited the first six volumes. Newton was from the 

 beginning the principal contributor of details of ornitho- 

 logical literature, and during three years 1871 to 1873- 

 he was the editor. The Record was so necessary to 

 English-speaking zoologists that when it proved a 

 financial failure as far as the publisher was concerned, 

 the Zoological Record Association was constituted, 

 which bore the expenses, until the Zoological Society 

 took over the publication of the work. Recently it was 

 united with the " Royal Society's International Cata- 

 logue," and it still appears annually as a separate volume 

 of that Catalogue, retaining its own title. Newton was so 

 much interested in its continuance that he declined to 

 receive any remuneration for his contributions or for the 

 three years of his editorship. 



In later life, with characteristic broadness of mind, he 

 appreciated and approved of the principles of Mendelism, 

 though he never professed to follow it in detail. While 

 the early stages are easy enough to understand, the later 

 steps are just the reverse, and I confess I cannot follow 

 all the steps nevertheless, I believe in its universal 

 truth." 



One of the most remarkable things about Mendelism 

 is that it tends to show the essentially identical nature of 



