82 MAN [Chap. VIII 



Letter 446 To R MUller - 



Down, June 3rd [1868]. 



Your letter of April 22nd has much interested me. I am 

 delighted that you approve of my book, for I value your 

 opinion more than that of almost any one. I have yet hopes 

 that you will think well of pangenesis. I feel sure that our 

 minds are somewhat alike, and I find it a great relief to have 

 some definite, though hypothetical view, when I reflect on the 

 wonderful transformations of animals, the re-growth of parts, 

 and especially the direct action of pollen on the mother form, 

 etc. It often appears to me almost certain that the characters 

 of the parents are " photographed " on the child, only by 

 means of material atoms derived from each cell in both 

 parents, and developed in the child. I am sorry about the 

 mistake in regard to Leptotes} I daresay it was my fault, yet 

 I took pains to avoid such blunders. Many thanks for all 

 the curious facts about the unequal number of the sexes 

 in Crustacea, but the more I investigate this subject the 

 deeper I sink in doubt and difficulty. Thanks, also, for the 

 confirmation of the rivalry of Cicadce? I have often reflected 

 with surprise on the diversity of the means for producing 

 music with insects, and still more with birds. We thus 

 get a high idea of the importance of song in the animal 

 kingdom. Please to tell me where I can find any account of 

 the auditor)' organs in the orthoptera ? Your facts are quite 

 new to me. Scudder has described an annectant insect in 

 Devonian strata, furnished with a stridulating apparatus. 3 I 

 believe he is to be trusted, and if so the apparatus is of 



1 See Animals and Plants, Ed. I., Vol. II., p. 134, where it is 

 stated that Oncidium is fertile with Leptotes, a mistake corrected in the 

 2nd edition. 



2 See Descent of Man, Ed. I., Vol. I., p. 351, for F. Miiller's observa- 

 tions ; and for a reference to Landois' paper. 



3 The insect is no doubt Xenoneura antiquorum, from the Devonian 

 rocks of New Brunswick. Scudder compared a peculiar feature in the 

 wing of this species to the stridulating apparatus of the Locustarite, but 

 afterwards stated that he had been led astray in his original description, 

 and that there was no evidence in support of the comparison with a 

 stridulating organ. See the "Devonian Insects of New Brunswick," 

 reprinted in S. H. Scudder's Fossil Insects of N. America, Vol. I., p. 179, 

 New York, 1890. 



