The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



and valuable. I got one to-day from a doctor on the hair 

 on backs of young weakly children, which afterwards falls 

 off. Also on hairy idiots. But I am tired to death, so 

 farewell. 



Thanks for your last letter. 



There is a very striking second article on my book in the 

 Pall MalL The articles in the Spectator^ have also in- 

 terested me much. — Again farewell. q. Darwin. 



Holly House, Barking, E. May 14, 1871. 



Dear Darwin, — Have you read that very remarkable book 

 '' The Fuel of the Sun " ? If not, get it. It solves the great 

 problem of the almost unlimited duration of the sun's heat 

 in what appears to me a most satisfactory manner. I re- 

 commended it to Sir C. Lyell, and he tells me that Grove 

 spoke very highly of it to him. It has been somewhat 

 ignored by the critics because it is by a new man with a 

 perfectly original hypothesis, founded on a vast accumu- 

 lation of physical and chemical facts; but not being en- 

 cumbered with any mathematical shibboleths, they have 

 evidently been afraid that anything so intelligible could 

 not be sound. The manner in which everything in physical 

 astronomy is explained is almost as marvellous as the powers 

 of Natural Selection in the same w^ay, and naturally excites 

 a suspicion that the respective authors are pushing their 

 theories ^^ a little too far.'' 



If you read it, get Proctor's book on the Sun at the 

 same time, and refer to his coloured plates of the pro- 

 tuberances, corona, etc., which marvellously correspond 



1 Spectator, March 11 and 18, 1871. "With regard to the evolution of con- 

 science the reviewer thinks that Mr. Darwin comes much nearer to the ' kernel 

 of the psychological problem ' than many of his predecessors. The second 

 article contains a good discussion of the bearing of the book on the question of 

 design, and concludes by finding in it a vindication of Theism more wonderful 

 than that in Paley's ' Natural Theology.* "—" Life and Letters," iii. 138. 



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