120/193 Of course I shall wish to subscribe as soon as possible to any memorial... I have made [skeletons] of wild and tame duck (oh the smell of well-boiled, high duck!), and I find the tame duck ought, according to scale of wild prototype, to have its two wings 360 grains in weight; but it has only 317, or 43 grains too little, or 1/7 of [its] own two wings too little in weight. This seems rather interesting to me. On the conclusions drawn from these researches, see Mr.Platt Ball, "The Effects of Use and Disuse" (Nature Series), 1890, page 55. |