ow me to make remuneration. I hope that
you will grant me this favour. There is one assistance which I will now
venture to beg of you--viz., to get me, if you can, another specimen
of an old white Angora rabbit. I want it dead for the skeleton; and not
knocked on the head. Secondly, I see in the "Cottage Gardener" (March
19th, page 375) there are impure half-lops with one ear quite upright
and shorter than the other lopped ear. I much want a dead one. Baker
cannot get one. Baily is looking out; but I want two specimens. Can you
assist me, if you meet any rabbit-fancier? I have had rabbits with
one ear more lopped than the other; but I want one with one ear quite
upright and shorter, and the other quite long and lopped.

LETTER 122. TO H.W. BATES. Down, March 26th [1861].

I have read your papers with extreme interest, and I have carefully read
every word of them. (122/1. "Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the
Amazon Valley." (Read March 5th and November 24th, 1860). "Entomological
Soc. Trans." V., pages 223 and 335).) They seem to me to be far richer
in facts of variation, and especially on the distribution of varieties
and subspecies, than anything which I have read. Hereafter I shall
re-read them, and hope in my future work to profit by them and make use
of them. The amount of variation has much surprised me. The analogous
variation of distinct species in the same regions strikes me as
particularly curious. The greater variability of the female sex is new
to me. Your Guiana case seems in some degree analogous, as far as plants
are concerned, with the modern plains of La Plata, which seem to
have been colonised from the north, but the species have been hardly
modified. (122/2. Mr. Bates (page 349) gives reason to believe that the
Guiana region should be considered "a perfectly independent province,"
and that it has formed a centre "whence radiated the species which now
people the low lands on its borders.")

Would you kindly answer me two or three questions if in your power? When
species A becomes modified in another region into a well-marked form C,
but is connected with it by one (or more) gradational forms B inhabiting
an intermediate region; does this form B generally exist in equal
numbers with A and C, OR INHABIT AN EQUALLY LARGE AREA? The probability
is that you cannot answer this question, though one of your cases seems
to bear on it...

You will, I think, be glad to hear that I now often hear of natural