Alfred Russel Wallace 



to get while on earth. It is a book to read and think over, 

 and read again. It is a masterpiece. . . . — Yours very truly, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 



To Prof. Poulton 



Broadstone, Wim^orne. July 27, 1907. 



My dear Poulton, — Thanks for your very interesting 

 letter. I am glad to hear you have a new hook on " Evolu- 

 tion"* nearly ready and that in it you will do something 

 to expose the fallacies of the Mutationists and Mendelians, 

 who pose before the world as having got all wisdom, before 

 which we poor Darwinians must hide our diminished heads ! 



Wishing to know the best that could be said for these 

 latter-day anti-Darwinians, I have just been reading Lock's 

 book on " Variation, Heredity, and Evolution." In the early 

 part of his book he gives a tolerably fair account of Natural 

 Selection, etc. But he gradually turns to Mendelism as the 

 " one thing needful " — stating that there can be "no sort 

 of doubt " that MendeFs paper is the *' most important " 

 contribution of its size ever made to biological science! 



** Mutation," as a theory, is absolutely nothing new — 

 only the assertion that new species originate always in 

 sports, for which the evidence adduced is the most meagre 

 and inconclusive of any ever set forth with such pretentious 

 claims ! I hope you will thoroughly expose this absurd 

 claim. 



Mendelism is something new, and within its very limited 

 range, important, as leading to conceptions as to the causes 

 and laws of heredity, but only misleading when adduced as 

 the true origin of species in nature, as to which it seems to 

 me to have no part. — Yours very truly, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 



1 •' Essays on Evolution." 1908. 

 84 



