The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



you have never done yet, ignore facts and arguments that 

 go against you. 



I am doing nothing just now but writing articles and 

 putting down an ti- Darwinians, being dreadfully ridden 

 upon by a horrid old-man-of-the-sea, who has agreed to 

 let me have the piece of land I have set my heart on, 

 and which I have been trying to get of him since last 

 February, but who will not answer letters, will not sign 

 an agreement, and keeps me week after week in anxiety, 

 though I have accepted his own terms unconditionally^ 

 one of which is that I pay rent from last Michaelmas! 

 And now the finest weather for planting is going by. It 

 is a bit of a wilderness that can be made into a splendid 

 imitation of a Welsh valley in little, and will enable me 

 to gather round me all the beauties of the temperate flora 

 which I so much admire, or I would not put up with the 

 little fellow's ways. The fixing on a residence for the rest 

 of your life is an important event, and I am not likely to 

 be in a very settled frame of mind for some time. 



I am answering A. Murray's Geographical Distribution 

 of Coleoptera for my Entomological Society Presidential 

 Address, and am printing a second edition of my ^^ Essays," 

 with a few notes and additions. Yery glad to see (by your 

 writing yourself) that you are better, and with kind regards 

 to all your family, believe me, dear Darwin, yours very 

 faithfully, Alfred E. Wallace. 



Holly House, Barking, E. January 27, 1871. 



Dear Darwin, — Many thanks for your first volume,^ 

 which I have just finished reading through with the 

 greatest pleasure and interest, and I have also to thank 

 you for the great tenderness with which you have treated 

 me and my heresies. 



1 " The Descent Of Man." 

 255 



