I quite agree that the book would have gained force by rearrangement in the way you suggest, but perhaps he thought it necessary to begin with a general argument in order to induce people to examine his new collection of facts, I am impressed most by the agreement of so many observers, some of whom struggle to explain away their own facts. What a wonderfully ingenious and suggestive paper that is by Galton on "Blood Relationship." It helps to render intelligible many of the eccentricities of heredity, atavism, etc.
Sir Charles Lyell was good enough to write to Lord Ripon and Mr. Cole[94] about me and the Bethnal Green Museum, and the answer he got was that at present no appointment of a director is contemplated. I suppose they see no way of making it a Natural History Museum, and it will have to be kept going by Loan Collections of miscellaneous works of art, in which case, of course, the South Kensington people will manage it. It is a considerable disappointment to me, as I had almost calculated on getting something there.
With best wishes for your good health and happiness, believe me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
P.S.—I have just been reading Howorth's paper in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. How perverse it is. He throughout confounds "fertility" with "increase of population," which seems to me to be the main cause of his errors. His elaborate accumulation of facts in other papers in Nature, on "Subsidence and Elevation of Land," I believe to be equally full of error, and utterly untrustworthy as a whole.—A.R.W.
Down, Beckenham, Kent. September 2, 1872.
My dear Wallace,—I write a line to say that I understood—but I may of course have been mistaken—from Huxley that Bastian distinctly stated that he had watched the development of the scale of Sphagnum: I was astonished, as I knew the appearance of Sphagnum under a high power, and asked a second time; but I repeat that I may have been mistaken. Busk told me that Sharpey had noticed the appearance of numerous Infusoria in one of the solutions not containing any nitrogen; and I do not suppose that any physiologist would admit the possibility of Infusoria absorbing nitrogen gas. Possibly I ought not to have mentioned statements made in private conversation, so please do not repeat them.
I quite agree about the extreme importance of such men as Cohn [illegible] and Carter having observed apparent cases of heterogenesis. At present I should prefer any mad hypothesis, such as that every disintegrated molecule of the lowest forms can reproduce the parent-form, and that the molecules are universally distributed, and that they do not lose their vital power until heated to such a temperature that they decompose like dead organic particles.
I am extremely grieved to hear about the Museum: it is a great misfortune.—Yours most sincerely,