406 



34 MAN [Chap. VIII 



Letter 406 There is much more that I should like to write, but I 

 have not strength. 



P.S. Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous accord- 

 ing 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. 



Letter A. R. Wallace to C. Darwin. 



5, Westbourne Grove Terrace, W., 



May 29th [1864]. 



You are always so ready to appreciate what others do, 

 and especially to overestimate my desultory efforts, that I 

 cannot be surprised at your very kind and flattering remarks 

 on my papers. I am glad, however, that you have made a 

 few critical observations (and am only sorry that you were 

 not well enough to make more), as that enables me to say 

 a few words in explanation. 



My great fault is haste. An idea strikes me, I think over 

 it for a few days, and then write away with such illustrations 

 as occur to me while going on. I therefore look at the 

 subject almost solely from one point of view. Thus, in my 

 paper on Man, 1 I aim solely at showing that brutes are 

 modified in a great variety of ways by Natural Selection, but 

 that in none of these particular ways can Man be modified, 

 because of the superiority of his intellect. I therefore no 

 doubt overlook a few smaller points in which Natural Selec- 

 tion may still act on men and brutes alike. Colour is one of 

 them, and I have alluded to this in correlation to constitution, 

 in an abstract 1 have made at Sclatcr's request for the 

 Natural History Review? At the same time, there is so much 

 evidence of migrations and displacements of races of man, 

 and so many cases of peoples of distinct physical characters 

 inhabiting the same or similar regions, and also of races of 

 uniform physical characters inhabiting widely dissimilar 

 regions— that the external characteristics of the chief races 

 of man must, 1 think, be older than his present geographical 

 distribution, and the modifications produced by correlation 

 to favourable variations of constitution be only a secondary 



1 Published in the Anthropological Review, 1864. 



2 Nat. Hist. Review, 1864, p. 328. 



