The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



Holly House, Barking, E. March 3, 1872. 



Dear Darwin, — Many thanks for your new edition of 

 the '' Origin,^' which I ha^ve been too busy to acknowledge 

 before. I think your answer to Mivart on the initial stages 

 of modification ample and complete, and the comparison of 

 whale and duck most beautiful. I always saw the fallacy 

 of these objections, of course. The eye and ear objection 

 you have not so satisfactorily answered, and to me the 

 difficulty exists of how three times over an organ of sight 

 was developed with the apparatus even approximately 

 identical. Why should not, in one case out of the three, 

 the heat rays or the chemical rays have been utilised for 

 the same purpose, in which case no translucent media 

 would have been required, and yet vision might have been 

 just as perfect ? The fact that the eyes of insects and 

 molluscs are transparent to us shows that the very same 

 limited portion of the rays of the spectrum is utilised for 

 vision by them as by us. 



The chances seem to me immense against that having 

 occurred through *^ fortuitous variation,'' as Mivart puts it. 



I see still further difficulties on this point but cannot go 

 into them now. Many thanks for your kind invitation. I 

 will try and call some day, but I am now very busy trying 

 to make my house habitable by Lady Day, when I must be 

 in it. — Believe me yours very faithfully, 



Alfred E. Wallace. 



Doum, Becheiiham, Kent. July 27, 1872. 



My dear Wallace, — I have just read with infinite satis- 

 faction your crushing article in Nature. "^ I have been the 

 more glad to see it, as I have not seen the book itself : I 



1 A review of Dr. Breeds book, " An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypotheses 

 of Mr. Darwin."— iVa/ure, July 25, 1872. 



271 



