WCP2506

[1]^{1, 1}

Boxmoor Songfleet Road

Poole Dorset

8^th — June 1912

Dear D. Wallace,

All my own children being employed away from home, my wife and I have come back to live in this charming locality, where we have an open view over Poole harbour, the Purbeck Hills, and the English Channel — Your book "The World of Life" has been my study ^lately and I am quite astounded at the enormous amount of information it contains, and how, (even in your long life) it could have been collected. You have extended my conceptions of the marvels of the universe, so that life here is only long enough to obtain glimpses of truth. On page 254 — I was interested to notice you seem independently to be in accord with the French Author Gustave le Bon that matter & ether are fundamentally connected if not identical.

That opinion was forced upon my mind from researches on colloidal silver in 1903 when I discovered that ordinary printing out photographic paper Can have its dissolved silver separated out from its solvent thrown out into the atmosphere in its nascent state, and be redeposited on prepared surfaces of gelatin. These deposits then display all the physical colours you so ably describe page 262. Simply because the particles of nascent silver are so fine that they stain the ether entangled [2] by their natural way of aggregation when trapped by gelatin, just as scent is trapped on prepared surfaces.

In my opinion all metals in the colloidal state probably will show the same results when thrown into their nascent states by destroying or altering their solvent. The whole object has to be explored. The action of ether on matter is also unknown, and it appears probable the false ideas about life by Haeckel & Others arise from all matter being in a state of flux by reason of its interpenetration of ether in various states of stress.

With a high appreciation of the great benefits of your writings and with kind regards to M^rs. Wallace in which my wife writes with me

Yours sincerely | Arch[bal]^d C. Ponton²[signature]