50 GROWTH OF THE 'ORIGIN.' [1855. 



home 'on Saturday after a week's work in London. Whilst 

 there I saw Yarrell, who told me he had carefully examined 

 all points in the Call Duck, and did not feel any doubt 

 about it being specifically identical, and that it had crossed 

 freely with common varieties in St. James's Park. I should 

 therefore be very glad for a seven-days' duckling and for one 

 of the old birds, should one ever die a natural death. Yarrell 

 told me that Sabine had collected forty varieties of the 

 common duck ! . . . Well, to return to business ; nobody, I am 

 sure, could fix better for me than you the characteristic age of 

 little chickens ; with respect to skeletons, I have feared it 

 would be impossible to make them, but I suppose I shall be 

 able to measure limbs, &c, by feeling the joints. What you 

 say about old cocks just confirms what I thought, and I will 

 make my skeletons of old cocks. Should an old wild turkey 

 ever die, please remember me ; I do not care for a baby tur- 

 key, nor for a mastiff. Very many thanks for your offer. I 

 have puppies of bull-dogs and greyhound in salt, and I have 

 had cart-horse and race-horse young colts carefully mea- 

 sured. Whether I shall do any good I doubt. I am getting 

 out of my depth. Most truly yours, 



C. Darwin. 



[An extract from a letter to Mr. Fox may find a place 

 here, though of a later date, viz. July, 1855 : 



" Many thanks for the seven days old white Dorking, and 

 for the other promised ones. I am getting quite ' a chamber 

 of horrors ; ' I appreciate your kindness even more than 

 before, for I have done the black deed and murdered an 

 angelic little fantail, and a pouter at ten days old. I tried 

 chloroform and ether for the first, and though evidently a 

 perfectly easy death, it was prolonged ; and for the second I 

 tried putting lumps of cyanide of potassium in a very large 

 damp bottle, half an hour before putting in the pigeon, 



