NA TURE 



337 



THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1916. 



LETTERS AND REMIXISCEKCES OF 

 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE. 



[Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Remini- 

 scences. By James Marchant. In two vols. 

 Vol. i., pp. xi + 320; vol. ii., pp. vi + 292. (Lon- 

 ■ don: CasseU and Co., Ltd., 19 16.) Price 255. 

 net. 



ALTHOUGH Alfred Russel Wallace published 

 a detailed autobiography, a welcome must 

 given to this book of letters and reminiscences, 

 /hich contains fresh and interesting information 

 regarding one of whom we wish to know all that 

 significant. Mr. Marchant, whose work has 

 :n a labour of love and veneration, tells us that 

 le original idea was to make a comparative study 

 jntitled "Darwin and Wallace," which was also 

 to include an estimate of the present-day position 

 the theory of natural selection. In this rather 

 lifEcult task the veteran naturalist, whose courage 

 lever wavered, proposed to co-operate, but he 

 [died soon after the agreement with the publishers 

 had been signed. Thus the originally projected 

 [book remains unwritten, and what Mr. Marchant 

 has done is rather less ambitious. He has made 

 [^ selection from several thousands of letters, and 

 las bound these together with a sympathetic and 

 rell-written biographical commentan.-. We wish, 

 ideed, that there had been more commentary and 

 fewer letters, for some of these seem to us quite 

 trivial, and others lose in effect because their sig- 

 lificance is not adequately indicated. We recog- 

 lise the value of having "the complete extant 

 >rrespondence between W'allace and Darwin " 

 [1857-188 1 ), though many of the fascinating 

 locuments have been published before ; but we 

 cannot repress our judgment that the book would 

 have been twice as valuable if half of it had 

 been left out. It is the old stor}- of the over- 

 crowded picture gallery. 



Restrained as Mr. Marchant is in his apprecia- 

 tion of Wallace, for whom he evidently has a 

 reverence as deep as his affection, he gives us 

 glimpses of a well-considered and intellectually 

 ^ balanced hero-worship which eveni'one will com- 

 \ mend. But we are not at all inclined to agree 

 ; that "uD to the present time the unique work 



• and position of Wallace have not been fully dis- 

 closed owing to his ereat modesty and to the 

 fact that he outlived all his contemporaries." The 



• fact is that the merits of Wallace's work have 

 : been carefully appreciated by those interested in 

 i the personal and historical side of biological pro- 

 ; gress: moreover, the charm of his personality 



and the sincerity of his character led both his 

 contemporaries and those who have entered into 

 his labours to a wise and generous inattention to 

 various intellectual idiosvncrasies which would 

 otherwise have blemished the great naturalist's 

 scientific reputation. It remains, unfortunatelv, 

 a matter of opinion whether Wallace was right in 

 his vigorous dissent from Darwin's theor>' of 

 NO. 2434, VOL. 97] 



sexual selection, but no biolc^ist questions the 

 value of his criticism and of his suggestions; on 

 the other hand, it will be found difficult to main- 

 tain that what Wallace said (in his later years) 

 regarding- either mutations or Mendelian inheri- 

 tance was marked by competence, hot to speak 

 of wisdom. 



It is indicative of the greatness of the man 

 that (as the preface tells us) there was not in 

 all the thousands of letters — published or un- 

 published — anything that an editor might be in- 

 clined to suppress, but our point is that in the 

 volumes before us it is not difficult to find ex- 

 amples of obiter dicta which are all verA- well in 

 a letter, but do not, when read in cold blood, 

 conform with what we know of the writer's 

 sagacity. In illustration we may point to the 

 sentence, "The Piltdown skull does not prove 

 much, if anything," and to the remarks on Berg- 

 son and on Bateson. Little thing^s of this sort 

 do not, of course, affect Wallace's scientific repu- 

 tation, which it would be an impertinence to speak 

 or think of except in terms of the highest respect, 

 but -we see little use in seriously chronicling- re- 

 marks which were based on misunderstandings. 



But too much must not be made of the inclusion 

 of matierial which a more critical editor might 

 have sifted out, for the task of selection must 

 have been exceedingly difficult, and there is no 

 doubt as to the value of even minute details in 

 producing a picturesque impression. It may well 

 be that some of the letters that appear to us 

 without significance will be appreciated by other 

 readers. In any case, we have to thank Mr. 

 Marchant for a picture of Wallace as a man which 

 is firmer and more complete than that previously 

 available. A very lovable and noble picture forms 

 round our memories of him as the apprecia- 

 tion before us recalls his guilelessness, sincerity, 

 kindness, and humility, his eagerness of mind and 

 unlimited range of interests, his adventurous 

 speculativeness, his enjoyment of all aspects of 

 Nature, his continual thoug-ht for the welfare of 

 his fellows, and his undimmed vision of the un- 

 seen. From first to last we get an impression of 

 magnanimity that makes us proud of our race. 

 As Mr. Marchant T^'ell says :- — 



".Apart altogether from his scientific p>osition 

 and attainments, which set him on hig-h, he was 

 I a noble example of brave, resolute, and hopeful 

 I endeavour, maintained without faltering to the 

 I end of a long life. .And this is not the least valu- 

 able part of his legacy to the race." 



. In spite of the g^eneral criticism which we have 

 , been compelled to make, we heartily congratulate 

 Mr. Marchant on the effectiveness of his tribute 

 to his illustrious friend. The commentary is in- 

 teresting- in style and admirable in its mood ; the 

 editing- has been done with scrupulous carefulness. 

 The lists of Wallace's works include his letters 

 and reviews in Nature, arranged chronologically. 

 The illustrations "are of g-reat interest, especially 

 the frontispieces to the two volumes and the 

 charming photc^raph of Wallace's mother. 



