The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



a larger amount of sudden variation in some direction is 

 likely. 



Mivart's greatest error, the confounding ^^ individual 

 variations '' with ^^ minute or imperceptible variations," is 

 well exposed by C. Wright, and that part I should like to 

 see reprinted ; but I always thought you laid too much stress 

 on the slowness of the action of Natural Selection owing to 

 the smallness and rarity of favourable variations. In your 

 chapter on Natural Selection the expressions, ^^ extremely 

 slight modifications," ^^ every variation even the slightest," 

 ** every grade of constitutional difference," occur, and these 

 have led to errors such as Mivart's. I say all this because 

 I feel sure that Mivart would be the last to intentionally mis- 

 represent you, and he has told me that he was sorry the word 

 '' infinitesimal," as applied to variations used by Natural 

 Selection, got into his book, and that he would alter it, as 

 no doubt he has done, in his second edition. 



Some of Mivart-s strongest points— the eye and ear, for 

 instance — are unnoticed in the review. You will, of course, 

 reply to these. His statement of the '' missing link " argu- 

 ment is also forcible, and has, I have no doubt, much weight 

 with the public. As to all his minor arguments, I feel with 

 you that they leave Natural Selection stronger than ever, 

 while the two or three main arguments do leave a lingering 

 doubt in my mind of some fundamental organic law of de- 

 velopment of which we have as yet no notion. 



Pray do not attach any weight to my opinions as to the 

 review. It is very clever, but the writer seems a little like 

 those critics who know an author's or an artist's meaning 

 better than they do themselves. 



My house is now in the hands of a contractor, but I am 

 wall-building, etc., and very busy.— With best wishes, believe 

 me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully, 



Alfred E. Wallace. 

 267 



