RECORD: Darwin, C. R. [1858.11.13-30]. Draft of Origin of species, Sect. 7, folio 241. CUCNY-HerterBox1[.1]. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed and edited by John van Wyhe, corrections by Christine Chua 11.2022. RN4
NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Photograph courtesy of Kevin W. Schlottmann. Reproduced with the kind permission of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The mount is annotated in purple ink: "Page of original Mss of Darwins 'Origin of Species / Presented to Christian Herter by Mrs. Litchfield (Henrietta Darwin) during the Winter of 1904."
Christian Archibald Herter (1865-1910) was an American physician and pathologist who specialised in diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. He met Horace Darwin in Cambridge in 1903 and H. E. Litchfield in Cannes in 1904, if not otherwise. She allowed him to take notes and quotations from Darwin's notes on marriage. CUCNY-HerterBox1[.3].
A 4 September 1904 letter from Litchfield to Herter is kept with the Origin manuscript and is also first transcribed and published here: CUCNY-HerterBox1[.4]. A second letter (CUCNY-HerterBox1[.5]) dated 4 October 1904 which was enclosed with the Origin manuscript is not addressed to Christian Herter but to his daughter Christine Herter. Hence the annotation on the mount is mistaken as the manuscript was sent to Christine Herter for her autograph collection. This manuscript was not previously known to Darwin scholars.
The text of the draft corresponds to Origin, Chapter VII, Instinct, pp. 214-15. [word at page break in green]
[241]
[top left corner damaged]
(241
Sect. 7. Instincts
[tures] to give a single instance Le Roy describes a dog, of whose , great-grand parents, one was a wolf, & this dog showed a trace of its wild parentage only in not coming in a straight line to his master when called.
Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of as actions which have become inherited simply from long continued & compulsory habit; but this, I think, is incorrect. No one would ever have thought of teaching or probably could have taught the tumbler-pigeon to tumble, — an action which as I have witnessed, is performed by young birds, that have never once seen any bird tumble
no doubt a bird pigeon showed some tendency to this strange habit & long-continued selection of the best birds did individuals in successive generations has done the best; so the now there are House-tumblers (near Glasgow) as I hear from Mr. Brent which cannot fly eighteen inches high, without going head over heels. It may be doubted whether any one would have thought of training a dog to point, had not some one dog naturally evinced some a tendency to in this line; and this is known occasionally to be the case, & occur, as I once saw plainly in a pure terrier. When the first tendency was once displayed, selection & training in each successive generation would complete the work; & unconscious selection is still at work, as each man tries to get &
Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
File last updated 9 November, 2023