WCP4327

Letter (WCP4327.4545)

[1]

Holly House, Barking E.

Septr. 4th. 1870

J. Birkbeck Nevins. M.D.

Dear Sir

I only returned home last night & have been moving about for the last week so your kind note should have been answered before.

It will give me much pleasure to accept Mrs. Nevin's1 & your kind invitation for the Brit[ish]. Ass[ociation]. week, and [2] I hope my inability to answer your letter before may not have put you to any inconvenience.

I shall come to Liverpool on Wednesday & be with you some time in the afternoon.

Thanks for your "Address" which is a pleasant reminder of some of the most interesting [3] portions of the Exeter Meeting.2

I think however you are mistaken in imputing to Mr. Busk3 the view that arguments against Darwin are necessarily worthless. As President of the Section he knew the character of the papers beforehand; & he also knew that similar papers at previous meetings had been utterly worthless, because, like these, they had been written by men without any accurate or thorough knowledge [4] of Natural History. He is by no means a very earnest Darwinian if a Darwinian at all, but he knows that Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, &c: have devoted their lives to earnest study of the subject, and is very naturally incredulous as to the value of arguments against them by men who professedly know nothing whatever of Natural History either by original research or by conscientious study.

Let a man come with arguments founded on knowledge, not on ignorance, and he will I am sure be welcomed by all Darwinians.

Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R Wallace [signature]

1
Nevins (née Metcalfe) Maria Elizabeth (1822- before 1903). British. Wife of John Birkbeck Nevins (1818-1903).
2
Meeting of the British Association. Report of the Thirty-Ninth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Exeter in August 1869, London: John Murray. No "Address" to this meeting by Nevins himself, nor by George Busk, has been identified, though Busk presented papers on various subjects. C. Spence Bate, one of several Vice-Presidents of Section D, (Biology) gave the opening addressed to the Section (Report, pp. 104-106). ARW was also a Vice-President of the Section. See note 3.
3
Busk, George (1807-1886). British naval surgeon, zoologist and palaeontologist. Secretary of the Linnean Society (1857-1868). He was President of Section D, Biology, at the 1869 Exeter meeting of the BAAS. See note 2.

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP4327.4545)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Catchpole, Caroline [2012-07-13] Transcription checked by Lucas, Paula [2020-03-19]

Please cite as “WCP4327,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4327