348 THE 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' [lS6o. 



C. Darwin to J. M. Rodwell* 



15 Marine Parade, Eastbourne. 



November 5th [1860]. 



MY DEAR SIR, I am extremely much obliged for your 

 letter, which I can compare only to a plum-pudding, so full 

 it is of good things. I have been rash about the cats : f yet 

 I spoke on what seemed to me, good authority. The Rev, 

 W. D. Fox gave me a list of cases of various foreign breeds in 

 which he had observed the correlation, and for years he had 

 vainly sought an exception. A French paper also gives 

 numerous cases, and one very curious case of a kitten which 

 gradually lost the blue colour in its eyes and as gradually 

 acquired its power of hearing. I had not heard of your uncle, 

 Mr. Kirby's case \ (whom I, for as long as I can remember, 

 have venerated) of care in breeding cats. I do not know 

 whether Mr. Kirby was your uncle by marriage, but your 

 letters show me that you ought to have Kirby blood in your 

 veins, and that if you had not taken to languages you would 

 have been a first-rate naturalist. 



I sincerely hope that you will be able to carry out your in- 

 tention of writing on the " Birth, Life, and Death of Words." 

 Anyhow, you have a capital title, and some think this the 

 most difficult part of a book. I remember years ago at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, Sir J. Herschell saying to me, I wish 

 some one would treat language as Lyell has treated geology. 

 What a linguist you must be to translate the Koran ! Having 

 a vilely bad head for languages, I feel an awful respect for 

 linguists. 



* Rev. J. M. Rodwell, who was corner of which she is scratching." 

 at Cambridge with my father, re- f " Cats with blue eyes are in- 



members him saying : " It strikes variably deaf," ' Origin of Species,' 



me that all our knowledge about ed. i. p. 12. 



the structure of our earth is very J William Kirby, joint author 



much like what an old hen would with Spence, of the well-known ' I n- 



know of a hundred acre field, in a troduction to Entomology,' 1818. 



