Correspondence on Biology, etc. 



To Prof. Poulton 



Broadstone, Wintborne. August 5, 1904. 



My dear Poulton, — . . . What a miserable abortion of a 

 theory is " Mutation," which the Americans now seem to be 

 taking up in place of Lamarckism, " superseded.*' Any- 

 thing rather than Darwinism ! I am glad Dr. F. A. Dixey 

 shows it up so well in this week's A^ature/ but too mildly ! 

 — Yours Tery truly, Alfred E. Wallace. 



To Pbof. Poulton 



Broadsione, Wimborne. April 3, 1905. 



My dear Poulton, — Many thanks for copy of your 

 Address,' which I have read with great pleasure and will 

 forward to Birch next mail. You have, I think, produced 

 a splendid and unanswerable set of facts proving the non- 

 heredity of acquired characters. I was particularly pleased 

 with the portion on " instincts," in which the argument is 

 especially clear and strong. I am afraid, however, the whole 

 subject is above and beyond the average " entomologist " or 

 insect collector, but it will be of great value to all students of 

 evolution. It is curious how few even of the more acute 

 minds take the trouble to reason out carefully the teaching 

 of certain facts — as in the case of Romanes and the '* variable 

 protection," and as I showed also in the case of Mivart 

 (and also Romanes and Gulick) declaring that isolation 

 alone, without Natural Selection, could produce perfect and 

 well-delined species (see Nature, Jan. 12, 1899). . . . — ^Yours 

 faithfully, A. B. Wallace. 



1 Vol. Ixx. (1904), p. 313, a review of T. H. Morgan's " Evolution and 

 Adaptation." 



» " The Bearing of the Study of Insects upon the Question, Are Acquired 

 Characters Hereditary ? " The Presidential Address to the Entomological 

 Society of London, 1905, reprinted in " Essays on Evolution," p. 139. 



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