en. xi.] 18581859. 201 



down " the struggle for existence " while variations, on 

 which I was always thinking, must necessarily often be 

 beneficial, and would then cause those varieties to increase 

 while the injurious variations diminished.* You are quite 

 at liberty to mention the circumstances, but I think you 

 have coloured them a little highly, and introduced some 

 slight errors. I was lying on my bed (no hammocks in 

 the East) in the hot fit of intermittent fever, when the 

 idea suddenly came to me. I thought it almost all out 

 before the fit was over, and the moment I got up began 

 to write it down, and I believe finished the first draft the 

 next day. 



I had no idea whatever of " dying," as it was not a 

 serious illness, but I had the idea of working it out, so 

 far as I was able, when I returned home, not at all ex- 

 pecting that Darwin had so long anticipated me. I can 

 truly say now, as I said many years ago, that I am glad it 

 was so ; for I have not the love of work, experiment and 

 detail that was so pre-eminent in Darwin, and without 

 which anything I could have written would never have con- 

 vinced the world. If you do refer to me at any length, can 

 you send me a proof and I will return it to you at once ? 



Yours faithfully 



Alfeed E. Wallace. 



C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Miss Wedgwood's, Hartfield, 

 Tunbridge Wells [July 13th, 1858]. 



My dear Hooker Your letter to Wallace seems to 

 me perfect, quite clear and most courteous. I do not think 

 it could possibly be improved, and I have to-day forwarded 

 it with a letter of my own. I always thought it very possi- 

 ble that I might be forestalled, but I fancied that I had a 

 grand enough soul not to care ; but I found myself mis- 

 taken and punished ; I had, however, quite resigned myself, 

 and had written half a letter to Wallace to give up all pri- 

 ority to him, and should certainly not have changed had it 

 not been for Lyell's and your quite extraordinary kindness. 



* This passage was published as a footnote in a review of the Life and 

 Letters of Charles Darwin which appeared in the Quarterly Review* Jan. 

 1888. In the new edition (1891) of statural Selection and Tropical Nature 

 (p. 20), Mr. Wallace has given the facts above narrated. There is a slight 

 and quite unimportant discrepancy between the two accounts, viz. that in the 

 narrative of 1891 Mr. Wallace speaks of the " cold fit " instead of the " hot 

 fit " of his ague attack. 



