WCP2312

[1]

Magd[alen] Coll[ege]

15 March 1875

My Dear Wallace,

Yours¹ is a grand work & I am going over it with the greatest interest and most carefully — I am only afraid you will think I am taking too many & too great liberties in my remedies thereon — but all are made in blue ink & I wish them to be regarded merely as suggestions — otherwise I would not make them at all. Such as you may think to adopt you ought to mark in black & then tell the printer to disregard all not so distinguished.

It would take too long to tell you how pleased I am with it all — better to express my thanks even though briefly for your past [2] kindness in letting me see them MS. — a kindness to requite which my best attention is indeed due & I have given it.

As to the general plan I can suggest nothing by way of improvement & all my remedies, suggestions (or even corrections if you will) are on very unimportant points. Should you adopt any of them I shall think myself flattered — should you accept none I shall readily think you have good reasons for not doing so. The infernal traps laid by synonyms have caught you two or three times — thus the genus which we in Europe ^are pretty generally agreed to call Otocorys is by the Americans termed Eremophila & of course to bring Nearctic & Palaearctic faunas [3] into comparison, the same names should be used in each place. There are a few other cases of like sort — you have been also led (misled I <motion?> to think) by poor old George Gray's² blundering to make 2 genera out of one [word illeg.] — witness Fregilus & Pyrrhocorax, which I defy any to separate with show of reason — Dromolaea and Saxicola is another case in point.

You have also taken from him the "genus" Lusciniola — the type of which seems to be Sylvia melanopogon (of Temminck (?)[sic]) — now this species cannot I think be generically moved from that which includes S. schoenobaenus (Linn) = S. phragmitis, auctorem[?] — the proper name of which seems to be Calamodus —

Don't I pray you for a moment imagine that I am suggesting all this to you as a fault. It is the natural consequence of our terribly [4] complicated synonymy, which has been made worse than it otherwise would be by the mischief caused by its handling by a mere clerk like Gray or a pedant like Cabanis.³ The evil effects of their muddling I have been for long certain would produce confusion wherever things came to be treated by a Generalist, because only a Specialist can get such things right. The worst of it is there may be (I had almost written "must") other cases of this kind which I am not able to detect, because my knowledge as of all specialists goes but a little way — however I have done what I could —

I write this hoping however that we may meet tomorrow at the [MS illeg.] though I fear there is not much chance of it

Your very truly & obliged

Alfred Newton.⁴ [signature]