To Charles Lyell   18 [June 1858]¹

Dated by the endorsement. See also n. 3, below.

Wallace 1855. CD had first written to Alfred Russel Wallace in December 1855 to request skins of foreign breeds of domestic fowl (see Correspondence vol. 5, CD memorandum, [December 1855]). CD’s first surviving letter to him, dated 1 May 1857, discusses Wallace’s paper, but it is in his next letter of 22 December 1857 that CD mentions that Lyell (and Edward Blyth) called his attention to the paper (see Correspondence vol. 6). In 1856, CD had begun to prepare, at Lyell’s urging, an abstract of his theory for publication (see Correspondence vol. 6, letter from Charles Lyell, 1–2 May 1856). Shortly before that date, Lyell had visited Darwin at Down, and his notes indicate that he and CD discussed natural selection. It was probably during that discussion that Lyell recommended Wallace’s paper to CD. See McKinney 1972, pp. 111–12, and Wilson ed. 1970, p. xlv (which cites McKinney 1966). For CD’s notes on Wallace 1855, see Correspondence vol. 5, letter from Edward Blyth, 8 December 1855, n. 1. Wallace wrote to his friend Henry Walter Bates in January 1858 about his and CD’s work on species, referring to CD’s letter of 1 May 1857 (Wallace 1905, 1: 358): I have been much gratified by a letter from Darwin, in which he says that he agrees with ‘almost every word’ of my paper. He is now preparing his great work on ‘Species and Varieties,’ for which he has been collecting materials twenty years. He may save me the trouble of writing more on my hypothesis, by proving that there is no difference in nature between the origin of species and of varieties; or he may give me trouble by arriving at another conclusion; but, at all events, his facts will be given for me to work upon.

Wallace had sent CD the manuscript of a paper entitled ‘On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type’. Wallace’s manuscript has not been located; it was later published as part of a joint paper by Wallace and CD (Darwin and Wallace 1858), and the published text is reprinted in Appendix IV. The letter from Wallace that accompanied the manuscript is also missing (see n. 6, below). For the circumstances under which Wallace’s paper was composed, see Wallace 1905, 1: 358–63. The date on which CD received Wallace’s letter and manuscript has been the subject of debate. According to some scholars, the letter was probably posted between 5 and 19 March 1858 and and should therefore have arrived at Down in May (Brooks 1969 and 1984) or early June (McKinney 1972). See also the Introduction to this volume.

CD refers to a visit to Down made by Charles and Mary Elizabeth Lyell from 13 to 16 April 1856. See also n. 2, above.

CD’s manuscript sketch of his theory of natural selection, written in 1842, was expanded into a longer version in 1844 (DAR 6 and 7; Foundations). See Correspondence vol. 3.

The letter is missing. Wallace described its contents in Wallace 1905, 1: 363: I wrote a letter to him [CD] in which I said that I hoped the idea would be as new to him as it was to me, and that it would supply the missing factor to explain the origin of species. I asked him if he thought it sufficiently important to show it to Sir Charles Lyell, who had thought so highly of my former paper. CD later sent Wallace’s letter to Lyell (see letter to Charles Lyell, [25 June 1858]).