Univ[ersity]. Libr[ary].
Cambridge.
15th [January 1870].1
My dear Sir
I cannot refrain from writing to you about your very valuable letter in "Nature"2 which I hope will be taken up by others & continued by yourself — who they got to do the editorial I cannot imagine — but he obviously failed to understand anything — I think individual effort would not do — we could not collect elephants [2] as amateurs — but societies & private endowments like Hospitals would grow up directly if there is any real value in this Natural History knowledge— & if not we certainly don't want taxing for it. The only institution I know doing real good — spend but little — & is purely private in its origin — the "Smithsonian".3 The printed book Department of the Museum should be [3] most useful — if only they were restrained from fancy prices for Caxton4 & Wynkyn de Worde5 — as all classes are appealed to in the formation of a library. There can be no doubt that if the Museum was fully up to the time & had everything studied & arranged — & the duplicates sent over the country it would receive countless donations — at Paris they naturally receive nothing now.
[4] I fully believe that we want to put forward the voluntary part of science now just as the religious people [one illeg. word] not for the "offertory"6 & that while advanced people want to own the Church from the state with one hand, [that] they should want to unite the state & Science with the other is to me monstrous[.]
Yours v[er]y t[rul]y | G R Crotch [signature]
Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP2265.2155)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP2265,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 28 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2265