i867.] MR. WALLACE. 273 



use them. Do you intend to follow out your views, and if 

 so, would you like at some future time to have my few refer- 

 ences and notes ? I am sure I hardly know whether they are 

 of any value, and they are at present in a state of chaos. 



There is much more that I should like to write, but I 

 have not strength. 



Believe me, dear Wallace, yours very sincerely, 



Ch. Darwin. 



P.S. — Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous ac- 

 cording to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle classes, from 

 (having the) pick of the women ; but oh, what a scheme is 

 primogeniture for destroying natural selection ! I fear my 

 letter will be barely intelligible to you. 



[In February 1867, when the manuscript of ' Animals and 

 Plants ' had been sent to Messrs. Clowes to be printed, and 

 before the proofs began to come in, he had an interval of 

 spare time, and began a " chapter on Man," but he soon 

 found it growing under his hands, and determined to publish 

 it separately as a *' very small volume." 



The work was interrupted by the necessity of correcting 

 the proofs of * Animals and Plants,' and by some botanical 

 work, but was resumed in the following year, 1868, the mo- 

 ment he could give himself up to it. 



He recognized with regret the gradual change in his mind 

 that rendered continuous work more and more necessary to 

 him as he grew older. This is expressed in a letter to Sir J. 

 D. Hooker, June 17, 1868, which repeats to some extent what 

 is expressed in the Autobiography : — 



*^ I am glad you were at the ' Messiah/ it is the one thing 

 that I should like to hear again, but I dare say I should find 

 my soul too dried up to appreciate it as in old days ; and 

 then I should feel very flat, for it is a horrid bore to feel as I 

 constantly do, that I am a withered leaf for every subject 

 except Science. It sometimes makes me hate Science, though 

 God knows I ought to be thankful for such a perennial inter- 



