Alfred Russel Wallace 



has been quite fair : he gives in one place only half of one 

 of my sentences, ignores in many places all that I have 

 said on effects of use, speaks of my dogmatic assertion, 

 '' of false belief,'' whereas the end of paragraph seems to 

 me to render the sentence by no means dogmatic or arro- 

 gant; etc. etc. I have since its publication received some 

 quite charming letters from him. 



What an ardent (and most justly) admirer he is of you. 

 His work, I do not doubt, will have a most potent influence 

 versus Natural Selection. The pendulum will now swing 

 against us. The part which, I think, will have most in- 

 fluence is when he gives whole series of cases, like that of 

 whalebone, in which we cannot explain the gradational 

 steps; but such cases have no weight on my mind — if a 

 few fish were extinct, who on earth would have ventured 

 even to conjecture that lung had originated in swim- 

 bladder ? In such a case as Thylacines, I think he . was 

 bound to say that the resemblance of the jaw to that of 

 the dog is superficial; the number and correspondence 

 and development of teeth being widely different. I think, 

 again, when speaking of the necessity of altering a number 

 of characters together, he ought to have thought of man 

 having power by selection to modify simultaneously or 

 almost simultaneously many points, as in making a grey- 

 hound or racehorse — as enlarged upon in my '^ Domestic 

 Animals.'' 



Mivart is savage or contemptuous about my '' moral 

 sense," and so probably will you be. I am extremely 

 pleased that he agrees with my position, as far as animal 

 nature is concerned^ of man in the series; or, if anything, 

 thinks I have erred in making him too distinct. 



Forgive me for scribbling at such length. 



You have put me quite in good spirits, I did so dread 

 having been unintentionally unfair towards your views. I 



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