i859— 1863] REGENERATION 235 



kind present of your Lectures. 1 Your reasoning seems quite Letter 161 

 satisfactory (though the subject is rather beyond my limit of 

 thought and knowledge) on the V. M. F. not being " a given 

 quantity." 2 And I can see that the conditions of life 

 must play a most important part in allowing this quantity 

 to increase, as in the budding of a tree, etc. How far 

 these conditions act on " the forms of organic life " (p. 46) 

 I do not see clearly. In fact, no part of my subject has 

 so completely puzzled me as to determine what effect to 

 attribute to (what I vaguely call) the direct action of the 

 conditions of life. I shall before long come to this subject, 

 and must endeavour to come to some conclusion when I 

 have got the mass of collected facts in some sort of order 

 in my mind. My present impression is that I have under- 

 rated this action in the Origin. I have no doubt when I 

 go through your volume I shall find other points of 

 interest and value to me. I have already stumbled on one 

 case (about which I want to consult Mr. Paget) — namely,*on 

 the re-growth of supernumerary digits. 3 You refer to "White 

 on Regeneration, etc., 1785." I have been to the libraries 

 of the Royal and the Linncan Societies, and to the British 

 Museum, where the librarians got out your volume and 

 made a special hunt, and could discover no trace of such 

 a book. Will you grant me the favour of giving me any 

 clue, where I could see the book? Have you it? if so, 

 and the case is given briefly, would you have the great kind- 

 ness to copy it? I much want to know all particulars. 

 One case has been given me, but with hardly minute 

 enough details, of a supernumerary little finger which has 

 already been twice cut off, and now the operation will 

 soon have to be done for the third time. I am extremely 

 much obliged for the genealogical table ; the fact of the 

 two cousins not, as far as yet appears, transmitting the 

 peculiarity is extraordinary, and must be given by me. 



1 On the Genus and Vestiges of Disease, (London) 1861. 



2 " It has been too common to consider the force exhibited in the 

 operations of life (the V. M. F.) as a given quantity, to which no accessions 

 can be made, but which is apportioned to each living being in quantity 

 sufficient for its necessities, according to some hidden law " (op. cit., 

 p. 41.) 



3 See Letters 178, 270. 



