Alfred Russel Wallace 



outang, etc., in the Annals^ of which I have lately been read- 

 ing the latter 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 Linnean 

 Transactions^ but your paper' at present will be rather be- 

 yond 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 ?' Both these 

 books have interested me much. I suppose you have read 

 Lubbock ?' 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), I 

 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 are 

 doing yourself. 



The only news which I have about the '^ Origin ^' is that 

 Fritz Mtiller published a few months ago a remarkable book' 

 in its favour, and secondly that a second French edition is 

 just coming out. — Believe me, dear Wallace, yours very sin- 

 cerely, Ch. Darwin, 



1 Probably the one on the Distribution of Malayan Butterflies, Linn. Soc. 

 Trans., xxv. 



* E. B. Tylor's '* Early History of Mankind," and Lecky's " Rationalism." 

 ' '* Prehistoric Times." 



* The note speaks of the " characteristic unselfishness " with which Wallace 

 ascribed the theory of Natural Selection to Darwin. 



^ " Fiir Darwin." 



164 



