WCP4044

[1]

The Dell, Grays Essex,

April 15^th 1875¹

Dear Newton

Many thanks for the March Paper. It contains the very thing I was expecting & waiting for, — monkeys & lemurs in ^N[orth] America! The difficulties of nomenclature are however coming up again, for in this paper I find whole families & genera, referred to as apparently well known & admitted groups, which are not mentioned in Leidy’s² summary of extinct mammalia of all N.[orth] America in 1873.

I shall be very glad of the ³[2] paper by the Milne Edwards⁴, as it will I have no doubt confirm much that is not in his Oiseaux Fossiles de la France. I wanted to see did it, & was wondering in what Library the book would be very likely to be.

Did you really think I quoted G.R.G.⁵ as an ornithologist? Did you not see my !!! after his name? I have heard "John Gould"⁶called in public "our great ornithologist,"— & he [3] is the representation of the science now most prominently before the Brit[ish] public. I am sorry you think there will not be & that there is no need for general ornithologists. I think there is the greatest need, & I think the interest of the study of birds as a whole, taking species from specialists, but studying genera & families in all their aspects, would be so great that, we shall surely soon have some man who will go in for it. Till we do I feel convinced we shall never get a satisfactory classification.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace—[signature]

[4]⁷P.S. I have just been looking at Garrod’s⁸ Parrot paper. There are some good hints in it & I shall modify my arrangement, —but I think it is only good for hints not to be followed. I believe there are to be formed external characters corresponding to every deep seated difference of internal structure. When no such external characters can possibly be formed I hold it to be prima facie evidence that the differences of internal structure are not deep seated or important. I am not clear that even the form of the sternum may not sometimes have changed rapidly & in that case, not be of great importance! But this is hearsay.

A.R.W. [signature]