214 GEOEGE JOHN ROMANES i88i- 



To F. Darwin, Esq. 



18 Cornwall Terrace, Eegent's Park, N.W. : January 20, 1889. 



Dear Darwin, — Many thanks for your long letter. 

 I thought you might have had some notes or memo- 

 ries of conversations, to show in a general way what 

 the ' line ' would have been. 1 If so, of course I should 

 not have said that my sayings were inspired, but 

 should myself have known that I was not going 

 astray. 



The line I am going to take is : 



1st. Even assuming, for sake of argument, that 

 heightened colour is correlated with increased vigour, 

 Wallace everywhere fails to distinguish between bril- 

 liancy and ornament ; yet it is the disposition of colours 

 in patterns, &c, that is the chief thing to be explained. 



2nd. In many cases (e.g. peacock's tail) the pattern 

 is only revealed when unfolded during courtship. 

 Besides natural selection could not be such a fool as to 

 develope large (physiologically expensive) and weighty 

 (impeding flight) structures like this — stags' antlers, 

 &c, merely as correlates of vigour. 



3rd. There is not much in Wallace's merely 

 negative difficulty about our not knowing what goes 

 on in the mind of a hen, when we set against that 

 difficulty the positive fact that we can see what does 

 go on in the mind of a cock — display, antics, song, &c. 



4th. To say that ' each bird finds a mate under any 

 circumstances ' is merely to beg the whole question. 



1 Of Mr. Darwin. 



