WCP4039

[1]

The Dell, Grays, Essex

March 21st. 1875

Dear Newton¹

I value your opinion & advice so highly that the more you note & criticize, the greater favour I shall esteem it. I was much relieved by your letter for I feared you might find something radically wrong in my plan, & insufficient in my details. The trouble caused by the horrid confusion of generic names in birds is something [2] awful as you know. Without special knowledge of the species, it is impossible to combine & harmonize different men’ work. The Fringillidae² for example are in an awful state of confusion, & I have had merely to guess at them. Do you know any one who would arrange them all for me in some system? I should be glad even now to alter it all if [3] I could. It is a great pity some Ornithologists do not take up groups instead of faunas only. Can you not incite some one to take up the Finches, another the Crows & Starlings, — also the Lamiidae³ & Muscicapidae⁴,— and thoroughly work out the genera & species of the whole world?

I have finished the Neotropical Chapter & also nearly the Ethiopian, when you are ready for them. I think I see a somewhat novel & curious view of the [4] past history of Africa & Madagascar but I shall wait to write it till I get my map showing the sea-bottom.

I shall not get one with the extinct fauna,— but how to treat it is a difficulty.

I think I must give first a systematic sketch of each great fossil fauna — European — N.[orth] American S.[outh] American, — Himalayan, Australian, — but without discussion,- and then discuss the evidence as hearing upon the relations of the regions to each other,- but whether to do this in the present Region chapters or separately I cannot decide. Either way it is most difficult to avoid repetitions.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]