Alfred Russel Wallace 



On the subject of sexual selection and protection you 

 do not yet convince me that I am wrong, but I expect 

 your heaviest artillery will be brought up in your second 

 volume, and I may have to capitulate. You seem, how- 

 ever, to have somewhat misunderstood my exact meaning, 

 and I do not think the difference between us is quite so 

 great as you seem to think it. There are a number of 

 passages in which you argue against the view that the 

 female has, in any large number of cases, been ^^ specially 

 modified '^ for protection, or that colour has generally been 

 obtained by either sex for purposes of protection. 



But my view is, and I thought I had made it clear, that 

 the female has (in most cases) been simply prevented from 

 acquiring the gay tints of the male (even when there was 

 a tendency for her to inherit it) because it was hurtful; 

 and, that when protection is not needed, gay colours are 

 so generally acquired by both sexes as to show that in- 

 heritance by both sexes of colour variations is the most 

 usual, when not prevented from acting by Natural Selec- 

 tion. 



The colour itself may be acquired either by sexual 

 selection or by other unknown causes. There are, how- 

 ever, difficulties in the very wide application you give to 

 sexual selection which at present stagger me, though no 

 one was or is more ready than myself to admit the perfect 

 truth of the principle or the immense importance and great 

 variety of its applications. Your chapters on Man are of 

 intense interest, but a« touching my special heresy not as 

 yet altogether convincing, though of course I fully agree 

 with every word and every argument which goes to prove 

 the ^^ evolution '' or ^^ development " of man out of a_ 

 lower form. My only difficulties are as to whether yoij 

 have accounted for every step of the development by ascer- 

 tained laws. Feeling sure- that the book will keep up and 



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