158 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1861 



contrary), for I long to see you. I congratulate you on your 

 grand work. 



Ever yours, 



C. DARWIN. 



P.S. Tell Lady Lyell that I was unable to digest the 

 funereal ceremonies of the ants, notwithstanding that Erasmus 

 has often told me that I should find some day that they have 

 their bishops. After a battle I have always seen the ants 

 carry away the dead for food. Ants display the utmost 

 economy, and always carry away a dead fellow-creature as 

 food. But I have just forwarded two most extraordinary 

 letters to Busk, from a backwoodsman in Texas, who has evi- 

 dently watched ants carefully, and declares most positively 

 that they plant and cultivate a kind of grass for store food, 

 and plant other bushes for shelter ! I do not know what to 

 think, except that the old gentleman is not fibbing intention- 

 ally. I have left the responsibility with Busk whether or no 

 to read the letters.* 



C. Darwin to Thomas Davidson. \ 



Down, April 26, 1861. 



MY DEAR SIR, I hope that you will excuse me for ven- 

 turing to make a suggestion to you which I am perfectly well 

 aware it is a very remote chance that you would adopt. I do 

 not know whether you have read my * Origin of Species ' ; in 

 that book I have made the remark, which I apprehend will 

 be universally admitted, that as a whole, the fauna of any 

 formation is intermediate in character between that of the 



* /. e. to read them before the Linnean Society. 



f Thomas Davidson, F.R.S., born in Edinburgh, May 17, 1817; died 

 1885. His researches were chiefly connected with the sciences of geology 

 and palaeontology, and were directed especially to the elucidation of the 

 characters, classification, history, geological and geographical distribution 

 of recent and fossil Brachiopocla. On this subject he brought out an im- 

 portant work, ' British Fossil Brachiopoda,' 5 vols. 4to. (Cooper, ' Men of 

 the Time,' 1884.) 



