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162   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

released from the operating table seemed little dashed in spirits, play, sniff and are ready to fight-to mate them at once.

"It would be exceedingly instructive, supposing the experiment to give affirmative results, to notice the gradually waning powers of producing mongrel offspring."

Galton clearly intended to continue the experiments; for a week after his paper was read he writes to George Darwin thanking him for a letter in which he had stated that his father was willing to take charge of eight of the rabbits'. Galton gives particulars about these eight young rabbits, how they should be mated and when the young should be returned to London for further operations.

"My paper will come out in the next number of the R. Society Proceedings and I will send your Father a copy with their pedigree marked." The locus for experimenting has, however, changed. "Though I shall not have my old excellent assistant Fraser, who sails this day week for Calcutta, I shall have the run of the University College Physiological Laboratory and shall be able, I believe, to conduct all the operations there with convenience greater than hitherto."

Again Darwin's letter is missing, but on April 25 Galton writes:

(11)   42, RUTLAND GATE, April 25, '71.

MY DEAR DARWIN, I am grieved beyond measure to learn that I have misrepresented your doctrine, and the only consolation I can feel is that your letter to 'Nature' may place that doctrine in a clearer light and attract more attention to it. I write hurriedly, as time is important to save the morning's post, in order to point out two passages which, I hope, in your letter to 'Nature' you will explain at length, so as to remove the false impression of Pangenesis under which I and probably others labour. In "Domestication of Animals etc." p. $74"    throw off

minute granules or atoms, -which circulate freely throughout the system   " And p. 379"..

the granules must be thoroughly diffused; nor does this seem improbable considering    the steady circulation of fluids throughout the body." (Is there not also a passage in which the words "circulating fluid" are used' I cannot hurriedly lay my hand on it, but believe it to exist.) Believe me-necessarily in great haste-Very sincerely yours, FRANCIS GALTON.

(12)   42, RUTLAND GATE, May 2/71.

MY DEAR DARWIN, I send a copy of the rabbit paper, in which I have marked the genealogy of the 6 little ones (p. 401).

You will see my reply in next week's `Nature'. I justify my misunderstanding as well as I can and, I think, reasonably. The half plaintive end to the letter will amuse you. Very sincerely yours, FRANCIS GALTON.

I begin an entirely new and different series of experiments to-morrow.

One letter more before we come to the Nature correspondence. Darwin's and Galton's letters in Nature opened a general correspondence, in part of which Darwin was roughly handled and Galton wrote to him as follows

(13)   42, RUTLAND GATE, May 12/71.

MY DEAR DARWIN, I have just seen -'s not nicely conceived letter in 'Nature' on Pangenesis, and write at once to you, lest you should imagine that I in any way share the animus of the letter. I do not know him; at least, I have, perhaps twice only, had occasion to converse with him, and what he says, certainly does not express my own opinion as expressed elsewhere and to others. I should not feel easy, if I did not disavow all share in it to you. Ever very

sincerely, FRANCIS GALTON.

My new experiments are not hopeful-alas? I hope Pangenesis will get well discussed now.


x A postcard dated April 14th Down:-"The rabbits arrived safe last night and are lively and pretty this morning C. D."-seems to belong to this date.