Correspondence on Biology, etc, 



any ordinary characteristic that I can discover. They are 

 the same in the lowest idiots as in ordinary persons. (I 

 took the impressions of some 80 of these, so idiotic that 

 they mostly could not speak, or even stand, at the great 

 Darenth Asylum, Dartford.) They are the same in clod- 

 hoppers as in the upper classes, and yet they are as here- 

 ditary as other qualities, I think. Their tendency to sym- 

 metrical distribution on the two hands is marTced, and 

 symmetry is a form of kinship. My argument is that 

 sexual selection can have had nothing to do with the pat- 

 terns, neither can any other form of selection due to 

 \igour, wits, and so forth, because they are not correlated 

 with them. They just go their own gait, uninfluenced by 

 anything that we can find or reasonably believe in, of a 

 naturally selective influence, in the plain meaning of the 

 phrase.— Very sincerely yours, Fbancis Galton. 



To Theo. D. a. Cockeeell 



Parkstone, Dorset. March 10, 1891. 



Dear Mr. Cockerell, — . . . Your theory to account for the 

 influence of a first male on progeny by a second seems very 

 probable — and in fact if, as I suppose, spermatozoa often 

 enter ova without producing complete fertilisation, it must 

 be so. That would be easily experimented on, with fowls, 

 dogs, etc., but I do not remember the fact having been 

 observed except with horses. It ought to be common, when 

 females have young by successive males. — Yours faithfully, 



A. R. Wallace. 



The next letter relates to a controversy with Romanes 

 concerning Herbert Spencer's argument about Co-adaptation 

 which Romanes had urged in support of Neo-Lamarckism as 

 opposed to IS^atural Selection. Prof. Meldola endeavoured to 

 show that the difficulties raised by Spencer and supported 

 £ 49 



