232 EVOLUTION [CHAr. Ill 



Letter 157 You will say Go to the Devil and hold your tongue. No, 

 I will not hold my tongue ; for I must add that after going, 

 for my present book, all through domestic animals, I have 

 come to the conclusion that there are almost certainly several 

 cases of two or three or more species blended together and now 

 perfectly fertile together. Hence I conclude that there must 

 be something in domestication, — perhaps the less stable con- 

 ditions, the very cause which induces so much variability, — 

 which eliminates the natural sterility of species when crossed. 

 If so, we can see how unlikely that sterility should arise 

 between domestic races. Now I will hold my tongue. P. 143 : 

 ought not " Sanscrit " to be " Aryan " ? What a capital 

 number the last Natural History Reviezv is ! That is a grand 

 paper by Falconer. I cannot say how indignant Owen's 

 conduct about E. Columbi has made me. I believe I hate 

 him more than you do, even perhaps more than good old 

 Falconer does. But I have bubbled over to one or two 

 correspondents on this head, and will say no more. I have 

 sent Lubbock a little review of Bates' paper in Linn. 

 Transact} which L. seems to think will do for your Review. 

 Do inaugurate a great improvement, and have pages cut, like 

 the Yankees do ; I will heap blessings on your head. Do not 

 waste your time in answering this. 



Letter 158 To John Lubbock [Lord Avebury]. 



Down, Jan. 23rd [1863]. 



I have no criticism, except one sentence not perfectly 

 smooth. I think your introductory remarks very striking, 

 interesting, and novel. 2 They interested me the more, 

 because the vaguest thoughts of the same kind had passed 

 through my head ; but I had no idea that they could be so 

 well developed, nor did I know of exceptions. Sitaris and 

 Meloe z seem very good. You have put the whole case of 

 metamorphosis in a new light ; I dare say what you remark 



1 The unsigned review of Mr. Bates' work on mimetic butterflies 

 appeared in the Nat. Hist. Review (1863), p. 219. 



2 " On the Development of Chloeon (Ephemera) dimidiatum, Part I. 

 By John Lubbock. Trans. Linn. Soc, Vol. XXIV., pp. 61-78, 1864 [Read 

 Jan. 15th, 1863]. 



3 Sitaris and Meloe, two genera of coleopterous insects, are referred to 

 by Lubbock (op. cit., pp. 63-64) as " perhaps . . the most remarkable cases 

 . . among the Coleoptera" of curious and complicated metamorphoses. 



