Correspondence on Biology, etc. 



seems to be the best that can be offered. You say that a 

 rise of a hundred fathoms would unite the Philippine 

 Islands and Bali to the Indian region. Is there, then, a 

 depth of 600 feet in that narrow strait of Bali, which seems 

 in my map only two miles or so in breadth ? 



I have [been] confined to the house for a week by a cold 

 or I should have tried to see you. I am afraid to go out 

 to-day. — Believe me ever most truly yours, Cha. Lyell. 



Sir C. Lyell to A. R. Wallace 



73 HarUy Street. April 4, 1867. 



My dear Mr. Wallace, — I have been reading over again your 

 paper published in 1855 in the Annals on '' The Law which 

 has regulated the Introduction of New Species '• ; passages 

 of which I intend to quote, not in reference to your priority 

 of publication, but simply because there are some points 

 laid down more clearly than I can find in the work of 

 Darwin itself, in regard to the bearing of the geological 

 and zoological evidence on geographical distribution and the 

 origin of species. I have been looking into Darwin's his- 

 torical sketch thinking to find some allusion to your essay 

 at page xx., 4th ed., when he gets to 1855, but I can find 

 no allusion to it. Yet surely I remember somewhere a 

 passage in which Darwin says in print that you had told 

 him that in 1855 you meant by such expressions as " species 

 being created on the type of pre-existing ones closely allied," 

 and by what you say of modified prototypes, and by the pas- 

 sage in which you ask ^' what rudimentary organs mean if 

 each species has been created independently," etc., that new 

 species were created by variation and in the way of ordinary 

 generation. 



Your last letter was a great help to me, for it was a 

 relief to find that the Lombok barrier was not so complete 



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