Broadstone, Wimborne. November 26, 1907.
My dear Poulton,—Many thanks for letting me see the proofs.[35] ... The whole reads very clearly, and I am delighted with the way you expose the Mendelian and Mutational absurd claims. That ought to really open the eyes of the newspaper men to the fact that Natural Selection and Darwinism are not only holding their ground but are becoming more firmly established than ever by every fresh research into the ways and workings of living nature. I shall look forward to great pleasure in reading the whole book. I was greatly pleased with Archdall Reid's view of Mendelism in Nature.[36] He is a very clear and original thinker.
I see in Essay X. you use in the title the term "defensive coloration." Why this instead of the usual "protective"? Surely the whole function of such colours and markings is to protect from attack—not to defend when attacked. The latter is the function of stings, spines and hard coats. I only mention this because using different terms may lead to some misconception.
Your illustration of mutation by throwing colours on a screen, and the argument founded on it, I liked much. That reminds me that H. Spencer's argument for inheritance of acquired variations—that co-ordination of many parts at once, required for adaptations, would be impossible by chance variations of those parts—applies with a hundredfold force to mutations, which are admittedly so much less frequent both in their numbers and the repetitions of them.—Yours very truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
TO PROF. POULTON
Broadstone, Wimborne. December 18, 1907.
My dear Poulton,—The importance of Mendelism to Evolution seems to me to be something of the same kind, but very much less in degree and importance, as Galton's fine discovery of the law of the average share each parent has in the characters of the child—one quarter, the four grandparents each one-sixteenth, and so on. That illuminates the whole problem of heredity, combined with individual diversity, in a way nothing else does. I almost wish you could introduce that!—Yours very truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.