WCP199

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

Feb.y 23rd. 1909

My dear Will¹

I send you herewith a copy of the Pall Mall Mag.². with my Interviews & Pictures which I think may interest & amuse you & your friends.

In my last letter I did not say anything about my morning at the Nat. Hist. Museum where I saw the model of the Diplodocus skeleton, given by Mr. Carnegie,³ 70 feet long and every bone to claws and tip of tail absolutely complete. It was a strange monster with neck and tail both as long as the body and a head no larger than that of a calf. The⁴body as big as the largest elephant or bigger. But ^what I enjoyed most [2] was seeing some splendid N. Guinea butterflies which Mr. Rothschild⁵ & his Curator ^{Mr. Jordon6,} had brought up from Tring on purpose to shew me. I could hardly have imagined anything as splendid as some of these. I also saw some of the new Paradise Birds in the B. M. [Birish Museum] But M. Rothschild says they have five times as many at Tring and much finer specimens and he invited me to spend a week end at Tring & see the Museum. So I may go, perhaps — in the summer.

But I have a curious thing to tell you about insect-collecting at "Old Orchard".⁷ About 5 months back I was examining one of the clumps [3] of an orchid in the Glass Case — which had been sent me from Buenos Ayres by Mr. John Hall⁸ — when 3 pretty little beetles dropped out of it, on the edge of the tank, and I only managed to catch 2 of them. They were pretty little Longicorns about an inch long, but very slender and graceful though only of a yellowish brown colour.

I sent them up to the B. Museum asking the name, and telling them they could keep them if of any use.. They told me they were a species of the large S. American genus Ibidion, but they had not got it in the collection!

On the Sunday before ‘Xmas day I was taking my morn^evening inspection of the orchids &c. in the glass case when a largish insect flew by my face, & when it settled it looked [4] like a handsome moth or butterfly. It was brilliant orange on the lower wings, the upper being shaded orange brown, very moth-like, but the antennae were clubbed like a butterfly’s. At last I thought it was a butterfly that mimicked a moth, but I had never seen anything like it before.. So ^{Next morning} I got a glass jar half filled with bruised laurel leaves, and Ma⁹ got it in, & after a day or two I set it, clumsily, & meant to take it to London, but had no small box to put it in. I told Mr. Rothschild about it, & he said it sounded like a Castnia, curious S. American moths very near to butterflies. So he got out the drawer with them, but mine was not there, then he another ^drawer half-empty, and there it was, but only a coloured drawing — but exactly like — It had been described, but neither the Museum nor the Mr. Rothschild had got it! I had had the orchids nearly a year and a half so it must [have] been [5] (5) in the chrysalis all that time & longer which Mr. R. said was the case with the Castnias. On going home I searched, and found the brown chrysalis case it had come out of among the roots of the same orchid the little new Longicorns had dropped from. It is I am pretty sure a Brazilian species, and I have written to ask Mr. Hall if he knows where it came from.

I have sent the moth and chrysalis to Prof. Poulton¹⁰ for the Oxford collection and he is greatly pleased with it; and especially with itshistory — one quite small bit of an orchid, after more than a year in a greenhouse, producing a rare or new beetle and an equally rare moth! I¹¹ had promised it to him when I saw him at the Lecture.

[6] Did you see my article¹² on Darwin¹³ in the Daily Mail of February 12th. I think I sent you the Clarion article which was written out of the rejected portions of the other ^{(to cut it to exact 1 col. length)} with a few additions, and which I think is the best of the two.

I have had a good deal of trouble with the Lecture, for publication in the "Fortnightly", as the Editor after I had sent him the MSS. with particulars of the 6 Diagrams (to be got from Macmillan) after 2 weeks delay told me he could not have any diagrams! I tried to describe them but found [7] I could not, and at last he agreed to have three, and these were to be made by the printer. Only to-day have I sent back the proofs finally corrected. It makes 24 pages, and I think will read well.

But so many parts want further explaining and expanding, that I really think I can make a quite separate book of it — a kind of companion to my "Man's Place".¹⁴ I think of calling it The World of Life and its Teachings in Science and Religion — or something of that sort — I want to develope [sic] fully the idea that all the great features of the [8] "World of Life" (as sketched in the article) were absolutely essential to its persistence throughout all the geological ages, in unbroken continuity, — and then, to the final development of Man. And this works in with the idea of "Man’s Place", that our Earth is so located in the Universe as to be the only place where this enormously lengthened continuity of the whole of this complex conditions could be secured. Thus evidences of one design and purpose are found both in the Universe of Matter and the World of Life!

I think this will make quite enough material for a Book, if carefully worked out. All the headings in the article will make chapters, & there are several others.

[in left margin] I hope you are feeling pretty nearly well now —

[in right margin] but if not you had better stay a month longer. A.R.W.

Your affectionate Pa | A.R. Wallace [signature]

I¹⁵ am glad to say I feel really better than any time the last 10 years. My little illness cleared me out, and now I eat better & feel better. A.R.W.