Mr B.F. Hartshorne . . . states in the most positive manner that the Weddas of Ceylon never laugh. Every conceivable incitive to laughter was used in vain. When asked whether they ever laughed, they replied: 'No, what is there to laugh at?'

When I was in my teens, Expression of the Emotions was the most approachable of Darwin's books and hence, to a lazy student, the most familiar. Natural Selection was an obvious truth; its theocidal consequences delightful; but the evidence, from palaeontology, from population studies, required hard graft among the bones and the bone-hard statistics. Not so Expression, with its closely observed pets, its anecdotal evidence from missionaries and pigeon fanciers, and its photographs of comical Victorian ladies expressing frenzy or disdain.

LRB 26 November 1998 | PDF Download