1860-1882] DESCENT OF MAN 5 1 



send your paper to Mr. Edmund Gurney, 1 who has written Letter 419 

 on and is much interested in the origin of the taste for mi; 

 In reading youressay.it occurred to me that facility in the 

 utterance of prolonged sounds (I do not think that you allu'le 

 to this point) may possibly come into play in rendering them 

 musical ; for I have heard it stated that those who vary their 

 voices much, and use cadences in long continued speaking, 

 feel less fatigued than those who speak on the same note. 



To G. J. Romanes. Letter 420 



Down, Feb. 5th, 1880. 



Romanes was at work on what ultimately came to be a book on 

 animal intelligence. Romanes's reply to this letter is given in his I 

 p. 95. The table referred to is published as a frontispiece to his Mental 

 Evolution in Animals, 1885. 



As I feared, I cannot be of the least use to you. I could 

 not venture to say anything about babies without reading my 

 Expression book and paper on Infants, or about animals 

 without reading the Descent of Man and referring to my 

 notes ; and it is a great wrench to my mind to change from 

 one subject to another. 



I will, however, hazard one or two remarks. Firstly, I 

 should have thought that the word " love " (not sexual 

 passion), as shown very low in the scale, to offspring and appa- 

 rently to comrades, ought to have come in more prominently 

 in your table than appears to be the case. Secondly, if you 

 give any instance of the appreciation of different stimulants 

 by plants, there is a much better case than that given by you 

 — namely, that of the glands of Drosera, which can be touched 

 roughly two or three times and do not transmit any effect, 

 but do so if pressed by a weight of yg-ocru grain (/ 

 Plants 263). On the other hand, the filament of Dioncea may 

 be quietly loaded with a much greater weight, while a touch 

 by a hair causes the lobes to close instantly. This has alw 

 seemed to me a marvellous fact. Thirdly, I have been accus- 

 tomed to look at the coming in of the sense of pleasure and 

 pain as one of the most important steps in the development 

 of mind, and I should think it ought to be prominent in your 

 table. The sort of progress which I have imagined is tl 

 a stimulus produced some effect at the point affected, and 



1 The late Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, 1SS0. 



