Parkstone, Dorset
August 28th. 1890
T.D.A. Cockerell Esq.
Dear Sir,
Your letter of Apr. 26th has remained unanswered because in it you stated you were coming to England in May, and thus it got put aside, and as I have been much occupied it has been overlooked till now.
The proposal you make of a collection of all the recorded facts hearing upon the various problems of Darwinism is a good one. Such a body of facts would be most valuable [2] to naturalists, — but I question whether it would pay for its publication. I feel sure my publishers wold not agree to "weight" my book with such a mass of additional matter. The only thing therefore would be to publish the materials separately, as Darwin did his "Animals & Plants under Domestication". I hope you will do this yourself, as you have evidently a taste for this kind of work & would [3] do it well. It would however be a tremendous task, as it would involve wading through the whole literature of Natural History for the last 20 years.
Yours very faithfully | Alfred R.Wallace [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4204.4259)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
[1] [p. 872]
The proposal you make of a collection of all the recorded facts bearing upon the various problems of Darwinism is a very good one. Such a body of facts would be most valuable to naturalists, but I question whether it would pay for its publication. I feel sure my publishers would not agree to "weight" my book with such a mass of additional matter. The only thing, therefore, would be to publish the materials separately, as Darwin did his "Animals and Plants under Domestication." I hope you will do this yourself, as you have evidently a taste for this kind of work... It would, however, be a tremendous task, as it would involve wading through the whole literature of natural history for the last twenty years.
Status: Draft transcription [Published letter (WCP4204.6898)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP4204,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4204