1870-1871] Sir Francis Gallon 197 



and how thoroughly you have mastered my MS. I am 

 pleased with this chapter now that it comes fresh to me. 

 Your affectionate, and admiring and obedient father, 



C. D. 



All this is as clear as daylight. Your plan of putting 

 corrections saves me a world of trouble, by just as much as 

 it must have caused you. N.B. You can write, I see, a 

 perfectly clear hand, as in all the corrections. 



Emma Darwin to her daughter Henrietta. 



DOWN, 8at., Mar. 19 [1870]. 



... F. is wonderfully set up by London, but so absorbed 

 about work and all sorts of things that I shall force 

 him off somewhere before very long. F. Galton's experi- 

 ments 1 about rabbits (viz. injecting black rabbit's blood into 

 grey and vice versa) are failing, which is a dreadful disap- 

 pointment to them both. F. Galton said he was quite 

 sick with anxiety till the rabbits' accouchements were over, 

 and now one naughty creature ate up her infants and the 

 other has perfectly commonplace ones. He wishes this 

 experiment to be kept quite secret as he means to go on, 

 and he thinks he shall be so laughed at, so don't mention. 

 Poor Bobby is better to-day and has eaten a little. He 

 looked so human, lying under a coat with his head on a 

 pillow, and one just perceived the coat move a little bit 

 over his tail if you spoke to him. 



" Bob " was the half-bred Newfoundland who used to 

 put on his " hot-house face " 2 of despair when delayed in 



1 In Sir Francis Galton's Memories of My Life he explains that 

 the experiments on rabbits above mentioned were made in order to 

 test Charles Darwin's theory of Pangenesis; no effect in the breed 

 was produced by the transfusion of blood. He wrote: ' It was 

 astonishing to see how quickly the rabbits recovered after the effect 

 of the anaesthetic had passed away. It often happened that their 

 spirits . . . were in no way dashed by an operation which only a few 

 minutes before had changed nearly one-half of the blood that was 

 in their bodies." 



2 See Life and Letters of C. D., 1 vol. edit., p. 70. 



