The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



eliminated, from the point of view of lightening this volume 

 and of economising the reader's attention. But I decided, 

 with the fullest approval of the Wallace and Darwin families, 

 that the letters of these illustrious correspondents should be 

 here presented as a whole, without mutilation. 



Many of the notes of explanation to the Wallace letters 

 have been gathered from his own writings, and are mainly 

 in his own words, and in such cases the reader has the advan- 

 tage of perusing letters annotated by their author, while most 

 of the notes to the Darwin letters are by Sir F. Darwin. 



Letter I 

 C. Darwin to A. K. Wallace 



Down, Bromley, Kent. May 1, 1857. 



My dear Sir, — I am much obliged for your letter of 

 Oct. 10th from Celebes, received a few days ago : in a 

 laborious undertaking, sympathy is a valuable and real 

 encouragement. By your letter, and even still more by 

 your paper in the Annals,^ a year or more ago, I can 

 plainly see that we have thought much alike and to a 

 certain extent have come to similar conclusions. In regard 

 to the paper in the Annals^ I agree to the truth of almost 

 every word of your paper ; and I daresay that you will agree 

 with me that it is very rare to iind oneself agreeing pretty 

 closely with any theoretical paper ; for it is lamentable how 

 each man draws his own different conclusions from the very 

 same fact. This summer will make the twentieth year ( ! ) 

 since I opened my first note-book on the question how 

 and in what way do species and varieties differ from each 

 other. I am now preparing my work for publication, but 

 I find the subject so very large, that though I have written 



1 " On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species." — 

 Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., 1855. The law is thus stated by Wallace: 

 •' Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with 

 a pre-existing closely-allied species." 



J 129 



