I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A. M.
DARWIN ON SPECIES: [From the Press, April 11th, 1863.]
To the Editor of the Press.
Sir - Your correspondent "A. M." is pertinacious on the subject of the
bear being changed into a whale, which I said Darwin contemplated as
not impossible. I did not take the trouble in any former letter to
answer him on that point, as his language was so intemperate. He has
modified his tone in his last letter, and really seems open to the
conviction that he may be the "careless" writer after all; and so on
reflection I have determined to give him the opportunity of doing me
justice.
In his letter of February 21 he says: "I cannot sit by and see
Darwin misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly manner. What
Darwin does say is 'that SOMETIMES diversified and changed habits may
be observed in individuals of the same species; that is, that there
are certain eccentric animals as there are certain eccentric men. He
adduces a few instances, and winds up by saying that in North America
the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open
mouth, thus catching, ALMOST LIKE A WHALE, insects in the water.'
THIS, AND NOTHING MORE, pp. 201, 202."
Then follows a passage about my carelessness, which (he says) is
hardly to be reprehended in sufficiently strong terms, and he ends
with saying: "This is disgraceful."
Now you may well suppose that I was a little puzzled at the seeming
audacity of a writer who should adopt this style, when the words
which follow his quotation from Darwin are (in the edition from which
I quoted) as follows: "Even in so extreme a case as this, if the
supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors
did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a
race of bears being rendered by natural selection more and more
aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths,
till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."
Now this passage was a remarkable instance of the idea that I was
illustrating in the article on "Barrel-organs," because Buffon in his
Histoire Naturelle had conceived a theory of degeneracy (the exact
converse of Darwin's theory of ascension) by which the bear might
pass into a seal, and that into a whale. Trusting now to the
fairness of "A. M." I leave to him to say whether he has quoted from
the same edition as I have, and whether the additional words I have
quoted are in his edition, and if so whether he has not been guilty
of a great injustice to me; and if they are not in his edition,
whether he has not been guilty of great haste and "carelessness" in
taking for granted that I have acted in so "disgraceful" a manner.
