sting note. I had only vaguely heard it said that
frogs had a rudiment of a sixth toe; had I known that such great men
had looked to the point I should not have dreamed of looking myself. The
rudiment sent to you was from a full-grown frog; so that if these bones
are the two cuneiforms they must, I should think, be considered to be
in a rudimentary condition. This afternoon my gardener brought in
some tadpoles with the hind-legs alone developed, and I looked at the
rudiment. At this age it certainly looks extremely like a digit, for
the extremity is enlarged like that of the adjoining real toe, and
the transverse articulation seems similar. I am sorry that the case is
doubtful, for if these batrachians had six toes, I certainly think
it would have thrown light on the truly extraordinary strength of
inheritance in polydactylism in so many animals, and especially on the
power of regeneration in amputated supernumerary digits. (178/1. In the
first edition of "Variation under Domestication" the view here given is
upheld, but in the second edition (Volume I., page 459) Darwin withdrew
his belief that the development of supernumerary digits in man is "a
case of reversion to a lowly-organised progenitor provided with more
than five digits." See Letters 161, 270.)

LETTER 179. TO J.D. HOOKER. Down [October 22nd, 1864].

The Lyells have been here, and were extremely pleasant, but I saw them
only occasionally for ten minutes, and when they went I had an awful day
[of illness]; but I am now slowly getting up to my former standard. I
shall soon be confined to a living grave, and a fearful evil it is.

I suppose you have read Tyndall. (179/1. Probably Tyndall "On the
Conformation of the Alps" ("Phil. Mag." 1864, page 255).) I have now
come round again to Ramsay's view, (179/2. "Phil. Mag." 1864, page 293.)
for the third or fourth time; but Lyell says when I read his discussion
in the "Elements," I shall recant for the fifth time. (179/3. This
refers to a discussion on the "Connection of the predominance of Lakes
with Glacial Action" ("Elements," Edition VI., pages 168-74). Lyell
adheres to the views expressed in the "Antiquity of Man" (1863) against
Ramsay's theory of the origin of lake basins by ice action.) What a
capital writer Tyndall is!

In your last note you ask what the Bardfield oxlip is. It is P. elatior
of Jacq., which certainly looks, when growing, to common eyes different
from the common oxlip. I will fight you to