Correspondence on Biology, etc. 



knowledge, and because the view which I took of the past 

 changes in Australia and New Zealand seemed calculated to 

 throw so much light upon them. Without such splendid 

 summaries of the relations of the Southern floras as are 

 given in Sir J. Hooker's Introductions, I should not have 

 touched the subject at all ; and I venture to hope that you 

 or some of your colleagues will give us other such summaries, 

 brought down to the present date, of other important floras — 

 as, for example, those of South Africa and South Temperate 

 America. 



Many thanks for additional peculiar British plants. 

 When I hear what Mr. Mitten has to say about the mosses, 

 etc., I should like to send a corrected list to Nature, which 

 I shall ask you to be so good as to give a final look over. — 

 Believe me yours very faithfully, Alfred R. Wallace. 



P.S. — Mr. Darwin strongly objects to my view of the 

 migration of plants along mountain-ranges, rather than 

 along lowlands during cold periods. This latter view seems 

 to me as difficult and inadequate as mine does to him. — 

 A. R. W. 



Wallace was in frequent correspondence with Professor 

 Raphael Meldola, the eminent chemist, a friend both of 

 Darwin and of Wallace, a student of Evolution, and a stout 

 defender of Darwinism. I received from him much help and 

 advice in connection with this work, and had he lived until 

 its completion — he died, suddenly, in 1914 — my indebtedness 

 to him would have been even greater. 



The following letter to Meldola refers to a suggestion that 

 the white colour of the undersides of animals might have been 

 developed by selection through the physical advantage gained 

 from the protection of the vital parts by a lighter colour and 

 therefore by a surface of less radiative activity. The idea 

 was that there would be less loss of animal heat through 

 such a white coating. We were at that time unaware of 



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