TO PROF. POULTON
Parkstone, Dorset. November 28, 1889.
My dear Mr. Poulton,—I have much pleasure in sending you Cope's book[20] (with the review of "Darwinism"), which I hope you will keep as long as you like, till you have mastered all its obscurities of style and eccentricities of argument. I think you will find a good deal in it to criticise, and it will be well for you to know what the leader of the Neo-Lamarckians regards as the foundation-stones [pg 048] of his theory. I greatly enjoyed my visit to Oxford, and only regretted that I could not leave more time for personal talk with yourself, for I am so deplorably ignorant of modern physiology that I am delighted to get intelligible explanations of its bearings on the subjects that most interest me in science. I quite see all its importance in investigations of the mechanism of colours, but there is so much still unknown that it will be very hard to convince me that there is no other possible explanation of the peacock's feather than the "continued preference by the females" for the most beautiful males, in this one point, "during a long line of descent"—as Darwin says! I expect, however, great light from your new book....—Believe me yours very faithfully,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
SIR FRANCIS GALTON TO A.R. WALLACE
42 Rutland Gate, S.W. May 24, 1890.
Dear Mr. Wallace,—I send the paper with pleasure, and am glad that you will read it, and I hope then see more clearly than the abstract could show the grounds of my argument.
These finger-marks are most remarkable things. Of course I have made out much more about them since writing that memoir. Indeed I have another paper on them next Thursday at the Royal Society, but that only refers to ways of cataloguing them, either for criminal administration, or what I am more interested in, viz. racial and hereditary inquiry.