WCP3384

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

Novr 8th. 1899

Messrs Macmillan & Co.¹

Dear Sirs

I return you the drawings from one lot of my sketches, with a few remarks for the artist's guidance which you had better read and see if you think he can do what I ask. I also send by Parcel Post a small box, with a lot of ^American arrow-heads, to help him to get the character of them. Though he has copied my sketches very well on the whole, & improved some of them, I should like them done with a few artistic touches showing that they are stone, & indicating the [2] chipping however slightly. I rather think he is not artist enough for this, but you must judge.

I enclose also list of the woodcuts from Bates' Amazon,² Flower & Lydekker's Mammalia,³ & the Zoological Society's works. The latter I will write to, to have electros made of the two named & sent to you. They are promised.

The cuts in the French book (Ballière & Co.'s) I do not think I shall want, as I am promised some good photographs which I think will do better. There is however a Map in it, of the Ancient Rhone Glacier which I should like, but I will [3] first colour it as I should like it, and send it to you, & perhaps a new one might be drawn that would do better & cost little more.

As soon as you have got all the electros &c. please send me a set of proofs, so that I can mark where each one is to come in the text, as I do not want to have more than one proof except where there is new matter.

There will ^be some delay yet before the volumes will be ready so I find great difficulty in getting good photographic portraits of Australians Papuans, & Polynesians. I have seen [4] a set of the Challenger Photos. but those of Natives are poor. I hope to get some from the Roy. Geog. Soc.y. The Anthropological Institute have very poor ones, & the Colonial Institute none. I see Mess^rs Hutchinson & Col. announce a book on the "Races of Mankind"⁴illustrated by Photographs, by H. N. Hutchinson assisted by Lydekker & Gregory. I suppose you do not happen to have heard how they got their Photos. I have written to Spooner & Co. 379, Strand, who I am told, has a large series.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]