WCP3778

Letter (WCP3778.3692)

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.1

June 7th. 1894

My dear Lester Ward2

I am glad to hear you are coming to England. I shall not be at Oxford myself as I have long given up attending the Association; but I shall hope to see you here, either before or afterwards. & shall be glad to give you a bed for a few days & accompany you to Weymouth & Portland. You will probably meet Carruthers3 of the Nat.[ural] Hist.[ory] Museum, who, if I mistake not, has also studied the Cycads4, & no doubt they have [2] a fine collection at South Kensington. I have no doubt Mr. Mansell-Pleydell5[sic] — a good local botanist & geologist, author of the "Flora of Dorsetshire"6 — will accompany us to Portland & shew you the best localities for the plant-remains. At Portland there are fine specimens of trunks 20 feet long & more outside some of the houses, and I dare say there are some good private collections, & also at the Dorchester Museum.

We are here moving on [3] rapidly towards Socialism, more so, I think, than you in America. The majority of our more intelligent workers are socialists, but of a reasonable type, who never even think of force, but of educating their fellow-workers & then carrying out their own ideas & principles by the majority they will some day have in Parliament.

Please let me know when to expect you. There are trains from Oxford here.

Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Prof. Lester F. Ward.

1
There is a small checkmark written in pencil in the upper right hand corner.
2
Lester Frank Ward (18 June 1841 — 18 April 1913), American botanist and sociologist.
3
William Carruthers (29 May 1830 — 2 June 1922), Scottish botanist in the Botanical Department of the Natural History Museum.
4
Members of the order Cycadales, a seed plant.
5
John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell (1817 — 1902), English botanist.
6
Flora of Dorsetshire: Or, A Catalogue of Plants Found in the County of Dorset, with Sketches of Its Geology and Physical Geography, written by John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell (1817 — 1902) and first published 1874.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3778.3692)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Seo, Veri [2013-08-02] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-08-02]

Published letter (WCP3778.5474)

[1]1 [p. 379]

Parkstone, Dorset, June 7, 1894

I am glad to hear you are coming to England. I shall not be at Oxford myself as I have long given up attending the Association, but I shall hope to see you here, either before or afterwards, & shall be glad to give you a bed for a few days & accompany you to Weymouth & Portland. You will probably meet Carruthers of the Nat. Hist. Museum, who, if I mistake not, has also studied the Cycads, & no doubt they have a fine collection at South Kensington. I have no doubt Mr. Mensell-Pleydell—a good local botanist & geologist, author of the "Flora of Dorsetshire"—would accompany us to Portland & shew you the best localities for the plant-remains. At Portland there are fine specimens of trunks 20 feet long & more outside some of the houses, and I dare say there are some good private collections, & also at the Dorchester Museum.

We are here moving on rapidly towards Socialism, more so, I think, than you in America. The majority of our more intelligent workers are socialists, but of a reasonable type, who never even think of force, but of educating their fellow-workers & then carrying out their own ideas & principles by the majority they will some day have in Parliament.

Please let me know when to expect you. There are trains from Oxford here.

1
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: Fourth of five letters from Wallace to Ward sent over an eleven year period, which were published in a note by Bernhard J. Stern printed in the April 1935 issue of The Scientific Monthly.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Published letter (WCP3778.5474)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Smith, Charles Hyde [2013-02-06] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-02-08]

Please cite as “WCP3778,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3778