Hamilton House, The Croft, Hastings
Feb.[ruar[y 8th. 1889
Dear Mr. Hemsley1
Many thanks for your observations on my last sheet. I have modified several expressions in accordance with some of your remarks but as to the main point — the attempted explanation of how very complex modes of adaptation to insect-fertilization made while so many more simple modes exist, — and also why some of the most wide-spread plants have no such adaptations — I must hold to my view till a better is given. On the theory of natural selection this is a initial point, and I cannot find that botanists have yet even recognized it as a difficulty much [2] less attempted to explain it. But in my great ignorance of recent botanical literature I may be quite wrong here, & the problem may have been recognized & solved. If so will you please refer me to the author.
I now send you another sheet on which cols. 166-168 refer to plants, and I shall be greatly obliged by any corrections or remarks you have to make on it. I send it without the following sheet completing the special subjects, because I am anxious to get on with the my work; & to wait till the succeeding sheet comes in before [3] sending them to you would cause great delay.
Yours very sincerely | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]
W. B. Hemsley Esq.
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3924.3853)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP3924,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3924