Alfred Russel Wallace 



of it before doing so. I have not, however, found time to 

 get beyond the first three chapters, but that is quite suffi- 

 cient to show me how exceedingly interesting you have made 

 the subject, and how completely and admirably you have 

 worked it out. I expect it will be one of the most popular 

 of your works. I have just been asked to write a review 

 of it for the Quarterly Journal of Science^ for which pur- 

 pose I shall be in duty bound to seek out some deficiencies, 

 however minute, so as to give my notice some flavour of 

 criticism. 



The cuts and photos are admirable, and my little boy 

 and girl seized it at once to look at the naughty babies. 



With best wishes, believe me yours very faithfully, 



Alfred E. Wallace. 



P.S. — I will take this opportunity of asking you if you 

 know of any book that will give me a complete catalogue 

 of vertebrate fossils with some indication of their affinities. 

 —A. R. W. 



Down, Beckenham, Kent. January 13, 1873. 



My dear Wallace, — I have read your review with much 

 interest, and I thank you sincerely for the very kind spirit 

 in which it is written. I cannot say that I am convinced 

 by your criticisms.* If you have ever actually observed a 

 kitten sucking and pounding with extended toes its mother, 

 and then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the 

 same thing on a soft shawl, and ultimately an old cat (as 

 I have seen), and do not admit that it is identically the same 

 action, I am astonished. 



1 Quarterly Journal of Science, January, 1873, p. 116 : " lean hardly believe 

 that when a cat, lying on a shawl or other soft material, pats or pounds it with 

 its feet, or sometimes sucks a piece of it, it is the persistence of the habit of 

 pressing the mammary glands and sucking during kittenhood.'* Wallace goes 

 on to say that infantine habits are generally completely lost in adult life, and 

 that it seems unlikely that they should persist in a few isolated instances. 



280 



