i88o.] ERASMUS DARWIN. 397 



he came to the determination to leave the charge unanswered, 

 as unworthy of his notice.* Those who wish to know more 

 of the matter, may gather the facts of the case from Ernst 

 Krause's ' Charles Darwin/ and they will find Mr. Butler's 

 statement of his grievance in the Athenczum, January 31, 1880, 

 and in the St. James's Gazette, December 8, 1880. The affair 

 gave my father much pain, but the warm sympathy of tho^e 

 whose opinion he respected soon helped him to let it pass 

 into a well-merited oblivion. 



The following letter refers to M. J. H. Fabre's ' Souvenirs 

 Entomologiques.' It may find a place here, as it contains a 

 defence of Erasmus Darwin on a small point. The postscript 

 is interesting, as an example of one of my father's bold ideas 

 both as to experiment and theory :] 



C. Darwin to /. H. Fabre. 



Down, January 31, 1880. 



MY DEAR SIR, I hope that you will permit me to have 

 the satisfaction of thanking you cordially for the lively pleas- 

 ure which I have derived from reading your book. Never 

 have the wonderful habits of insects been more vividly de- 

 scribed, and it is almost as good to read about them as to 

 see them. I feel sure that you would not be unjust to even 

 an insect, much less to a man. Now, you have been misled 

 by some translator, for my grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, 

 states (' Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 183, 1794) that it was a wasp 

 (guepe) which he saw cutting off the wings of a large fly. I 

 have no doubt that you are right in saying that the wings are 

 generally cut off instinctively ; but in the case described by 

 my grandfather, the wasp, after cutting off the two ends of 

 the body, rose in the air, and was turned round by the wind ; 

 he then alighted and cut off the wings. I must believe, with 

 Pierre Huber, that insects have " une petite dose de raison." 



* He had, in a letter to Mr. Butler, expressed his regret at the over 

 sight which caused so much offence. 



