WCP2460

[1]

ROYAL GARDENS KEW

DIRECTOR

Kew

Jan^y. 18. 93

Private

Dear Mr Wallace,

I am very sorry to hear that you are not very well. But with such weather it is scarcely to be wondered at. It was the more kind of you to be at the pains to write me so charming a letter.¹

In one way I sympathize with you. I am getting on in years, alas, myself and to my astonishment I find that I am growing perfectly indifferent to [2] any thing but the daily interest of my absorbing work. As to any thing one can do for science & its advancement I seem to Pusey² still thundering in one’s [illeg.] ^ears as he used to do at Oxford, ‘securus judicat orbis terrarum’.

I hope you won’t think one impertinent if I say that when were at Kew last summer I could not help feeling in how many ways you reminded me of Mr Darwin.³

[3]

Your letter reminds me that man. When we used to stay with him Frank Balfour⁴ & I were quite abashed by the consideration & deference with which he treated us. In F. B.’s case there was some ground for it. But I know it made me feel a very shabby impostor.

I am afraid the splendid modesty of the big men will be a rarer commodity in the future. No doubt many of the younger ones know an immense deal. But I doubt if [4] many of them will ever exhibit the grasp of great principles which we owe to you and your splendid band of contemporaries.

Believe me| Yours sincerely | W. T. Thiselton Dyer⁵ [signature]