2CO EVOLUTION [Chap. Ill 



Letter 136 think Owen will be wrong that my book will be forgotten in 

 ten years, for a French edition is now going through the 

 press and a second German edition wanted. Your long letter 

 to Bates has set my head working, and makes me repent of 

 the nine months spent on orchids ; though I know not why I 

 should not have amused myself on them as well as slaving on 

 bones of ducks and pigeons, etc. The orchids have been 

 splendid sport, though at present I am fearfully sick of them. 



I enclose a waste copy of woodcut of Mormodes ignca ; 

 I wish you had a plant at Kew, for I am sure its wonderful 

 mechanism and structure would amuse you. Is it not curious 

 the way the labellum sits on the top of the column ? — here 

 insects alight and are beautifully shot, when they touch a 

 certain sensitive point, by the pollinia. 



How kindly you have helped me in my work ! Farewell, 

 my dear old fellow. 



Letter 137 To H. W. Bates. 



Down, May 4th [1862]. 



Hearty thanks for your most interesting letter and three 

 very valuable extracts. I am very glad that you have been 

 looking at the South Temperate insects. I wish that the 

 materials in the British Museum had been richer ; but I should 

 think the case of the South American Carabi, supported by 

 some other case, would be worth a paper. To us who theorise 

 I am sure the case is very important. Do the South American 

 Carabi differ more from the other species than do, for instance, 

 the Siberian and European and North American and 

 1 limalayan (if the genus exists there) ? If they do, I entirely 

 agree with you that the difference would be too great to 

 account for by the recent Glacial period. I agree, also, with 

 you in utterly rejecting an independent origin for these 

 Carabi. There is a difficulty, as far as I know, in our igno- 

 rance whether insects change quickly in time ; you could 

 judge of this by knowing how far closely allied coleoptera 



in the present state of science is one advantage, at any rate. Indeed, I 

 think that it is, in the present state of the inquiry, the legitimate position 

 to take up ; it is time enough to bother our heads with the secondary 

 cause when there is some evidence of it or some demand for it — at 

 present I do not see one or the other, and so feel inclined to renounce any 

 other for the present." 



