Alfred Russel Wallace 



subject which will contain the most valuable series of 

 observations yet made on this question. Another point of 

 some importance where I cannot agree with you is your 

 treating dipsomania as a disease, only to be eliminated by 

 drunkenness and its effects. It appears to me to be only a 

 vicious habit or indulgence which would cease to exist in a 

 state of society in which the habit were almost universally 

 reprobated, and the means for its indulgence almost absent. 

 But this is a matter of comparatively small importance. — 

 Believe me yours very truly, Alfred B. Wallace. 



To Dr. Archdall Kbid 



Parkstone. April 28, 1896. 



Dear Sir, — '' We can but reason from the facts we know." 

 We know a good deal of the senses of the higher animals, 

 very little of those of insects. If we find — as I think we do — 

 that all cases of supposed " instinctive knowledge " in the 

 former turn out to be merely intuitive reactions to various 

 kinds of stimulus, combined with very rapidly acquired ex- 

 perience, we shall be justified in thinking that the actions of 

 the latter will some day be similarly explained. When Lloyd 

 Morgan's book is published we shall have much information 

 on this question. {See " Natural Selection and Tropical 

 Nature," pp. 91-7.)— Yours truly, Alfred B. Wallace. 



To Prof. Meldola 



Parkstone, Dorset. October 12, 1896. 



My dear Meldola, — I got Weismann's '' Germinal Selec- 

 tion " two or three months back and read it very carefully, 

 and on the whole I admire it very much, and think it does 

 complete the work of ordinary variation and selection. Of 

 course it is a pure hypothesis, and can never perhaps be 

 directly proved, but it seems to me a reasonable one, and it 



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