158 



Lift atul Letters of Fnmciti (roltoii 



(3) 42 Rutland Gate, S.W. March 17, 1870. 



Mt dear Darwin, No good news. Bartlett a8sure<l me this morning that it was a popular 

 prejudice that j'oung rabbits might not be lookc<l at, reasonable cjire IxjinR taken, so we optnunl 

 2 Ixixea and exaniineil the littt>rs. The first contained four dead young ones all true silver greys. 

 One, however, has a largish light foloure<l patt-h on its nose, but Hartlett tells me that this is 

 not unusual with silver greys as the very tips of their noses ari^ often whit*-. However this 

 patoh is gomewliat larger and there are faint li<)|)es, I think, that it may pi-ove more consiiler- 

 able than Bartlett Ix-lieves. 1 have one more litter yet to come and lioj)e to send you the ivsult 

 by Monday evening [)ost. I have coupled a new pair and n* coupled the 2 doe-s whoso litters 

 have failed, one of them with a more suitable mat«;, and expect tlie following results: 



The quaiititj' of bloofl transfu.sc*! wius only 1*25 per cent, of the weight of the rabliits wliioh 

 ia only the same thing a.s .'iUoz. of bliKxl to an ordituiry man. I know this is a very small pro- 

 portion of the whole amount of blood, but hope by a second oj)enition on the old bucks and by 

 improved operations on all the young ones to get a great deal more of alien qualities into their 

 veins. Very sincerely yours, Francis Galton. 



In a letter of Mi-s Darwin's to her daughter Henrietta dated Down, Sat., 

 Mar. 19 [1870] we read: 



"F. [Father] is wonderfully set up by London, but so abfiorbed about work, etc. and all sorts 

 of things that I sliall force him oft' somewhere before very long. F. Galt^m's experiments about 

 rabbits (viz. inje<'ting black rabbit's bltxxl into grey and ric* r<»r»a) arc failing, which is a dreadful 

 disap[K>intnient to tliem both. F. GalUm said he was quite sick with anxiety till the rabbits 

 accoiichemeiiU were over, and now one naughty creature ate up Ler infants and the other has 

 perfectly commonplace ones. He wishes this exper* to be kept quite secret as he means to 



go on, and he thinks he shall be so laughed at, so don't mention " A Century of Letttrg, 



Vol. II, p. 230. 



(4) 42, Rutland Gate, S.W. March 22, 1870, 

 Mt dear Darwin. Another litter — this time of 4 — and all of them are true silver greys. — 



Also, one of the does (mentioned in my last letter as transfuKe<l from a black and white) is 

 dead. 



My stud now stands as overleaf '. I call each silver grey by the name of the colour of the 

 rabbit froui which it has been infused. I also give the particulars of my fii"st liatcli. You will 

 see that there was much less variety in my pairs then, than there is now. I hope to try a new 

 mode of tran.sfusion upon a wholly new stock, taking j'ounger rabbits and putting much more 

 alien blood into thera. Ever very sincerely yours, F. Galton. 



[There follows a list of transfusions into bucks and does of first and second 

 Imtches.] 



(5) 42, Rutland Gate, S.W. March 31, 1870. 



My dear Darwin, Better news— decidedly better. I opeiu>d the hutches where the young 

 rabbits are, this morning, and found now that the white patch on the nose of which T spoke 

 had become markedly conspicuous and larger, but also that a white vertical bar had begun to 



' I have not thought it needful to reproduce this table, as the details of the experiments are 

 given in the paper as finally published. 



