WCP2205

[1]

Sea Lawn

Torquay

Jan[uary] 29 1894

Dear D^r Wallace,

I feel constrained to thank you for y[ou]r. most agreeable letter, re "Old World Questions".¹

How seldom a critic satisfies an author! but this is what you have done.

As an "old parlimentary hand" you must often have felt dissatisfied, even with the most complimentary criticisms, because they lacked knowledge — Hence, it is delightful to find in you remarks that kind of aquaintance with the [2] subject which makes the expression of a fresh mind so interesting and important a factor in discussion.

I fear, ^however (and feared when I wrote) that you are right, and [1 word deleted] even in N. England, the labour conditions are going from bad to worse. Thanks also for your praise of the book as readable — It had a fair success, both here and in the States, where Stanford[?] rêpublished it in their "Handy Series", and sold selling several thousand copies; so that I ought, I suppose, to feel quite satisfied — But yours, [3] I am bound to say, is the only criticism of the book which has given me the satisfaction arising from being completey understood as well as praised.

I sent a note to "Nature",² as you suggested, but before shortening it as they desired, I read J. Geikie[']s³ new book⁴ and found there was really nothing left for me to say on Fluvio glacial action saving to suggest that an ^{Expedition for the} measurement of the Greenland streams w[oul]d. be useful. This however was y[ou]^r idea, so I refrained from adding unnecessarily to the discussion — I find, by the way, James Geikie's volume very readable and his defense of his original position with [4] regard to Croll[']s hypothesis well sustained. The ways[?], various as they are, are all cleverly threaded on the same string and have, togther a telling effect on the [word illeg.] "Almost there persuaded[?] me to be a Crollite". It is so comfortable to have a formulated creed!

Yours very sincerely, | D. Pidgeon⁵. [signature]