Alfred Russel Wallace 



I have asked my friend Mr. Mott to send you the last 

 of his remarkable papers — on Haeckel. But the part I hope 

 you will read with as much interest as I have done is that 

 on the deposits of Carbon, and the part it has played and 

 must be playing in geological changes. He seems to have 

 got the idea from some German book, but it seems to me 

 very important, and I wonder it never occurred to Sir 

 Charljes LyelL If the calculations as to the quantity of 

 undecomposed carbon deposited are anything approaching 

 to correctness, the results must be important. 



Hoping you are in pretty good health, believe me yours 

 very faithfully, Alfred E. Wallace. 



Rose Hill, Dorking. July 23, 1877. 



My dear Darwin, — Many thanks for your admirable 

 volume on *' The Forms of Flowers. '^ It would be im- 

 pertinence of me to say anything in praise of it, except 

 that I have read the chapters on *^ Illegitimate Offspring 

 of Heterostyled Plants " and on '* Cleistogamic Flowers '' 

 with great interest. 



I am almost afraid to tell you that in going over the 

 subject of the Colours of Animals, etc., for a small volume 

 of essays, etc., I am preparing, I have come to conclusions 

 directly opposed to voluntary sexual selection^ and believe 

 that I can explain (in a general way) all the phenomena of 

 sexual ornaments and colours by laws of development aided 

 by simple Natural Selection. 



I hope you admire as I do Mr. Belt's remarkable series 

 of papers in support of his terrific *^ oceanic glacier river- 

 damming " hypothesis. In awful grandeur it beats every- 

 thing ** glacial '' yet out, and it certainly explains a won- 

 derful lot of hard facts. The last one, on the ^^ Glacial 

 Period in the Southern Hemisphere," in the Quarterly 

 Journal of Science^ is particularly fine, and I see he has 



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