3$0 EVOLUTION [CHAP. V 



Letter 260 To R. Meldola. 1 



Southampton, August I3th, 1873. 



I am much obliged for your present, which no doubt I 

 shall find at Down on my return home. I am sorry to say 

 that I cannot answer your question ; nor do I believe that you 

 could find it anywhere even approximately answered. It is 

 very difficult or impossible to define what is meant by a large 

 variation. Such graduate into monstrosities or generally 

 injurious variations. I do not myself believe that these are 

 often or ever taken advantage of under nature. It is a 

 common occurrence that abrupt and considerable variations 

 are transmitted in an unaltered state, or not at all transmitted, 

 to the offspring, or to some of them. So it is with tailless 

 or hornless animals, and with sudden and great changes 

 of colour in flowers. I wish I could have given you any 

 answer. 



Letter 261 To E. S. Morse. 



[Undated.] 



I must have the pleasure of thanking you for your kind- 

 ness in sending me your essay on the Brachiopoda. 2 I have 

 just read it with the greatest interest, and you seem to me 

 (though I am not a competent judge) to make out with 

 remarkable clearness an extremely strong case. What a 

 wonderful change it is to an old naturalist to have to look 

 at these " shells ' as " worms " ; but, as you truly say, as far 

 as external appearance is concerned, the case is not more 

 wonderful than that of cirripedes. I have also been particularly 

 interested by your remarks on the Geological Record, and on 

 the lower and older forms in each great class not having been 

 probably protected by calcareous valves or a shell. 



P.S. Your woodcut of Lingula is most skilfully intro- 

 duced to compel one to see its likeness to an annelid. 



1 Raphael Meldola, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in Finsbury Tech- 

 nical College (City and Guilds of London Institute), and a well-known 

 entomologist ; translated and edited Weismann's Studies in the Theory 

 of Descent, 1882-83. This letter, with others from Darwin to Meldola, 

 is published in Charles Darwin a??d the Theory of Natural Selection^ by 

 E. B. Poulton, pp. 199 et seg., London, 1896. 



2 " The Brachiopoda, a Division of Annelida," Amer. Assoc. Proc., 

 Vol. XIX., p. 272, 1870, and Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist., Vol. VI., 

 p. 267, 1870. 



