1 864— 1869] WALLACE 263 



likely of any to occur in a state of nature, and to be inherited, Letter 187 

 inasmuch as all domesticated birds present races with a tuft 

 or with reversed feathers on their heads. 1 have sometimes 

 thought that the progenitor of the whole class must have been 

 a crested animal. 



Do you make any progress with your journal of travels ? 

 I am the more anxious that you should do so as I have lately 

 read with much interest some papers by you on the ourang- 

 outan, etc., in the Annals, of which I have lately been 

 reading the later volumes. I have always thought that 

 journals of this nature do considerable good by advancing the 

 taste for Natural History: I know in my own case that nothing 

 ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's 

 Personal Narrative. I have not yet received the last part 

 of the Linncan Transactions, but your paper 1 at present will 

 be rather beyond my strength, for though somewhat better, 

 I can as yet do hardly anything but lie on the sofa and be 

 read aloud to. By the way, have you read Tylor and Lecky ? 2 

 Both these books have interested me much. I suppose" you 

 have read Lubbock. 3 In the last chapter there is a note about 

 you in which I most cordially concur. I see you were at the 

 British Association but I have heard nothing of it except what 

 I have picked up in the Reader. I have heard a rumour that 

 the Reader is sold to the Anthropological Society. If you do 

 not begrudge the trouble of another note (for my sole channel 

 of news through Hooker is closed by his illness) 1 should 

 much like to hear whether the Reader is thus sold. I should 

 be very sorry for it, as the paper would thus become sectional 

 in its tendency. If you write, tell me what you arc doing 

 yourself. The only news which I have about the Origin is 

 that Fritz Mullcr published a few months ago a remarkable 

 book 1 in its favour, and secondly that a second French 

 edition is just coming out. 



1 Probably on the variability and distribution of the butterflies of the 

 Malayan region : Linn. Soc. Trans., XXV., 1866. 



2 Tylor, Early History of Mankind; Lecky's Rationalism. 



3 Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 479: "... the theory of Natural 

 Selection, which with characteristic unselfishness he ascribes unreservedly 

 to Mr. Darwin." 



4 Fiir Darwin, 



