xxvj DARWIN 13 



in arguing from dispersal to oceanic islands to mountains. 

 Not only in latter cases currents of sea are absent, but what 

 is there to make birds fly direct from one Alpine summit to 

 another? There is left only storms of wind, and if it is 

 probable or possible that seeds may thus be carried for great 

 distances, I do not believe that there is at present any 

 evidence of their being thus carried more than a few 

 miles." 



This is the most connected piece of criticism in the notes, 

 and I therefore give it verbatim. My general reply is printed 

 in " More Letters," vol. iii. p. 22. Of course I carefully con- 

 sidered all Darwin's suggestions and facts in later editions 

 of my book, and made use of several of them. The last, 

 as above quoted, I shall refer to again when considering the 

 few important matters as to which I arrived at different 

 conclusions from Darwin. But I will first give another 

 letter, two months later, in which he recurs to the same 

 subject. 



"Down, January 2, 1881. 



*'My dear Wallace, 



" The case which you give is a very striking one, 

 and I had overlooked it in Nature ; ^ but I remain as great a 

 heretic as ever. Any supposition seems to me more probable 

 than that the seeds of plants should have been blown from 

 the mountains of Abyssinia, or other central mountains of 

 Africa, to the mountains of Madagascar. It seems to me 

 almost infinitely more probable that Madagascar extended 

 far to the south during the glacial period, and that the 

 S. hemisphere was, according to Croll, then more temperate ; 

 and that the whole of Africa was then peopled with some 

 temperate forms, which crossed chiefly by agency of birds 

 and sea-currents, and some few by the wind, from the shores 

 of Africa to Madagascar subsequently ascending to the 

 mountains. 



" How lamentable it is that two men should take such 



^ Nature^ December 9, 1880. The substance of this article by Mr. Baker, of 

 Kew, is given in " More Letters," vol. iii. p. 25, in a footnote. 



