Ɛpsilon

WCP3778

Letter (WCP3778.3692)

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

June 7th. 1894

My dear Lester Ward1

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 Carruthers2 of the Nat. Hist. Museum, who, if I mistake not, has also studied the Cycads, & no doubt they have [2] a fine collection at South Kensington. I have no doubt Mr. Mansell-Pleydell3 — a good local botanist & geologist, author of the "Flora of Dorsetshire"4— 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
Ward, Lester Frank (1841-1913). American palaeobotanist and later professor of sociology.
2
Carruthers, William (1830-1922). Keeper of Botany at the British Museum (1871-1895), and paleobotanist. Father of John Bennett Carruthers (1869-1910).
3
Mansel-Pleydell, John Clavell (1817-1902). British natural historian and antiquary. President of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club.
4
Mansel-Pleydell, John Clavell. 1874. Flora of Dorsetshire: Or, A catalogue of plants found in the County of Dorset, with sketches of its geology and physical geography. Whittaker & Company.

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] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

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 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3778