WCP1918

[1] [p. 237]

Down, Bromley, Kent, S.E. March 22, 1869.

My dear Wallace, — I have finished your book.¹ It seems to me excellent, and at the same time most pleasant to read. That you ever returned alive is wonderful after all your risks from illness and sea voyages, especially that most interesting one to Waigiou and back. Of all the impressions which I have received from your book, the strongest is that your perseverance in the cause of science was heroic. Your descriptions of catching the splendid butterflies have made me quite envious, and at the same time have made me feel almost young again, so vividly have they brought before my mind old days when I collected, though I never made such captures as yours. Certainly collecting is the best sport in the world. I shall be astonished if your book has not a great success; and your splendid generalisations on geographical distribution, with which I am familiar from your papers, will he new to most of your readers. I think I enjoyed most the Timor case, as it is best demonstrated; but perhaps Celebes is really the most valuable. I should prefer looking at the whole Asiatic continent as having formerly been more African in its fauna, than admitting the former existence of a continent across the Indian Ocean. Decaisne's paper on the flora of Timor, in which he points out its close relation to that of the Mascarene Islands, supports your view. On the other hand, I might advance the giraffes, etc., in the Sewalik deposits. How I wish someone would collect the plants of Banca! The puzzle of Java, Sumatra and Borneo is like the three geese and foxes: I have a wish to extend Malacca through Banca to part of Java and thus make three parallel peninsulas, but I cannot get the geese and foxes across the river.

Many parts of your book have interested me much I [2] [p. 238] always wished to hear an independent judgment about the Rajah Brooke, and now I have been delighted with your splendid eulogium on him.

With respect to the fewness and inconspicuousness of the flowers in the tropics, may it not be accounted for by the hosts of insects, so that there is no need for the flowers to be conspicuous? As, according to Humboldt, fewer plants are social in the tropical than in the temperate regions, the flowers in the former would not make so great a show.

In your note you speak of observing some inelegancies of style. I notice none. All is as clear as daylight. I have detected two or three errata.

In Vol. I. you write londiacus: is this not an error?

Vol. II., p. 236: for western side of Aru read eastern.

Page 315: Do you not mean the horns of the moose? For the elk has not palmated horns.

I have only one criticism of a general nature, and I am not sure that other geologists would agree with me: you repeatedly speak as if the pouring out of lava, etc., from volcanoes actually caused the subsidence of an adjoining area. I quite agree that areas undergoing opposite movements are somehow connected; but volcanic outbursts must, I think, be looked at as mere accidents in the swelling up of a great dome or surface of plutonic rocks; and there seems no more reason to conclude that such swelling or elevation in mass is the cause of the subsidence than that the subsidence is the cause of the elevation; which latter view is indeed held by some geologists. I have regretted to find so little about the habits of the many animals which you have seen.

In Vol. II., p. 399, I wish I could see the connection between variations having been first or long ago selected, and their appearance at an earlier age in birds of paradise [3] [p. 239] than the variations which have subsequently arisen and been selected. In fact, I do not understand your explanation of the curious order of development of the ornaments of these birds.

Will you please to tell me whether you are sure that the female Casuarius (Vol. II., p. 150) sits on her eggs as well as the male? — for, if I am not mistaken, Bartlett told me that the male alone, who is less brightly coloured about the neck, sits on the eggs. ln Vol. II., p. 255, you speak of male savages ornamenting themselves more than the women, of which I have heard before; now, have you any notion whether they do this to please themselves, or to excite the admiration of their fellow-men, or to please the women, or, as is perhaps probable, from all three motives?

Finally, let me congratulate you heartily on having written so excellent a book, full of thought on all sorts of subjects. Once again, let me thank you for the very great honour which you have done me by your dedication. — Believe me, my dear Wallace, yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN.

Vol. II., p. 455: When in New Zealand I thought the inhabitants a mixed race, with the type of Tahiti preponderating over some darker race with more frizzled hair; and now that the stone instruments [have] revealed the existence of ancient inhabitants, is it not probable that these islands were inhabited by true Papuans? Judging from descriptions the pure Tahit[i]ans must differ much from your Papuans.