Alfred Russel Wallace 



To Miss Violet Wallace 



Parkstone, Dorset. May 5, 1892. 



My dear Violet, — I have finished reading " Freeland.'* 

 It is very good — as good a story as '' Looking Backward," 

 but not quite so pleasantly written — rather hea\^ and 

 Germanic in places. The results are much the same as in 

 " Looking Backward " but brought about in a different and 

 very ingenious manner. It may be called '' Individualistic 

 Socialism." I shall be up in London soon, I expect, to the 

 first Meetings of the Examiners in the great science of 

 ''omnium gatherum.'" — Your affec. papa, 



Alfred E. Wallace. 



While he lived at Parkstone our father built a small 

 orchid house in which he cultivated a number of orchids 

 for a few years, but the constant attention which they de- 

 manded, together with the heated atmosphere, were too 

 much for him, and he was obliged to give them up. He 

 was never tired of admiring their varied forms and colours, 

 or explaining to friends the wonderful apparatus by which 

 many of them were fertilised. The following letter shows 

 his enthusiasm for orchids : 



To Miss Violet Wallace 



Parkstone, Dorset. November 25, 1894. 



My dear Violet, — ... I have found a doctor at Poole 

 (Mr. Turner) who has two nice orchid houses which he 

 attends to entirely himself, and as I can thus get advice 

 and sympathy from a fellow maniac (though he is a public 

 vaccinator !) my love of orchids is again aroused to fever- 

 heat, and I have made some alterations in the greenhouse 

 which will better adapt it for orchid growing, and have 

 bought a few handsome kinds very cheap, and these give 

 me a lot of extra work and amusement. . . . 



* See footnote on p. 109. 

 114 



