From Francis Galton 12 May 1870
42 Rutland Gate SW
May 12 1870
My dear Darwin
Good rabbit news.! One of the latest litters has a white forefoot. It was born April 23rd. but as we do not disturb the young, the forefoot was not observed till to-day. the little things had huddled together shewing only their backs & heads and the foot was never suspected. The mother was injected from a grey and white and the father from a black and white.
This, recollect, is from a transfusion of only th part of alien blood in each parent; now, after many unsuccesful experiments, I have greatly improved the method of operation and am beginning on the other jugulars of my stock.1 Yesterday I operated on 2 who are doing well to-day & who now have rd. alien blood in their veins. On Saturday I hope for still greater success. and shall go on at any waste of rabbit life, until I get at least alien blood.
The experiment is not fair to Pangenesis until I do.2
We are for the time relieved from anxiety about my poor dear mother,3 who suffered the agonies of death over & over again, but has strangely pulled through. & is now comfortable though very weak and seriously shaken
Very sincerely yours | Francis Galton
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bulmer, Michael. 2003. Francis Galton: pioneer of heredity and biometry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Galton, Francis. 1871. Experiments in pangenesis, by breeding from rabbits of a pure variety, into whose circulation blood taken from other varieties had previously been largely transfused. [Read 30 March 1871.] Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 19 (1870–1): 393–410.
Pearson, Karl. 1914–30. The life, letters and labours of Francis Galton. 3 vols. in 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Summary
Good news: one little rabbit has a white forefoot.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7185
- From
- Francis Galton
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- London, Rutland Gate, 42
- Source of text
- DAR 105: A17–18
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7185,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7185.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18