WCP4401

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

March 15^th. 1896

My dear Poulton

I will first answer your questions about my collections. I think W.W. Saunders arranged to take the complete set of all my moths and other orders besides Lepidoptera & Coleoptera, in 1856 after I had sent home my larger Borneo (Sarawak) collections. I find my first note of "Mr Saunders’ Series" in my Aru Collections, sent home in 1857 & which reached London in January 1858. Before that time I fancy he took a set after the Brit[ish] Museum. But Sam[uel] Stevens, who was my agent throughout, has no doubt full records & can give you the exact particulars. I did not know you had all Wilson Saunders’ Collections. What other first "series" or private [2] Collections of mine did you have?

The small round locality labels I put on all my insects which were pinned, and either I or my assistant Charles Allen wrote them. I enclose you a list of them as near as I can remember. All ^insects were collected by myself except those from Mysol, Salwatty, and a few from Flores, where C[harles] Allen went alone, but I selected the series and labelled them where required myself, so that for the whole of my collections, if they have not been changed, I am sure of the Locality tickets being right.

Any other labels than the small round [3] ones are not mine, unless perhaps in some very rare cases.

Before I forget it — as Cope’s Origin of the Fittest is probably a rather scarce book in England I should like it ^to go either to the Linnean or Zoological Society, if either of them have not got it. Perhaps you will at your leisure ascertain this, & give it in my name. If both have got it, you can keep it or give it to the Bodleian!

I have now nearly finished reading Romanes, but do not find it very convincing. There is a large amount of special pleading. On two points only I feel myself hit. My doubt that Darwin really meant that all the individuals of a species could be similarly modified without selection is evidently wrong, as he adduces other quotations which I had overlooked.

[4] I wonder Darwin did not see that if the unknown "constant causes" he supposes, can modify all the individuals of a species, both ^either indifferently usefully & hurtfully, & that these characters so produced, are, as R[omanes] says, very numerous in all species & are sometimes the only specific characters, there the Neo-Lamarckians are quite right in putting Nat[ural] Select[io]n as a very secondary & subordinate influence, since all it has to do is to weed out the hurtful variations.

[5] The other point is, that my suggested explanation of sexual ornaments gives away my case as to the utility of all sp[ecial] ch[aracters]. It certainly does as it stands, but I now believe, & should have added, that all the ornaments where they differ from species to species’, are also Recognition Characters, and as th such were rendered stable by nat[ural] select[ion] from their first appearance.

I rather doubt the view you state, & which Gulick & Romanes make much of, that a portion of species, separated from the main body, will have a different average of characters, unless they are a local race, which has already been somewhat selected. The large amount of variation, & the tolerable regularity of the curve of variation, whenever about 50 ~ 100 individuals are <caug> measured in the same locality, shows that the bulk of a species are similar in amount of variation everywhere. But when [6] a portion of a species begins to be modified in adaptation to new conditions, distinction of some kind is essential, and therefore any slight difference would be increased by selection. I see no reason to believe that species (usually) have been isolated first & modified afterwards, but rather that new species usually arise from species which have a wide range, & in different areas need somewhat different characters & habits. Then distinctiveness arises both by adaptation & by development of recognition marks to minimise intercrossing.

[7] Of course, if a creature ^species with warning colours were, in part, completely isolated, and its colours or markings were accidentally different from the parent form, whatever set of markings & colours it had, would be, I consider, rendered stable for recognition, & also for protection, since if it varied too much the young birds & other enemies would take a heavier toll in learning it was uneatable. It might then be said ^that the character by which this species differs from the parent species is a useless character. But surely this is not what is usually meant by a "useless character". This is highly useful in itself, thought the difference from the other sp[ecies] is not [8]¹ useful. If they were in contact it would be useful, as a distinction preventing intercrossing, and so long as they are not brought together we cannot really tell if it is a species at all, since it might breed freely with the other parent form & thus return back to one type. The "useless characters" I have always had in mind when arguing this questions are those which are or are supposed to be absolutely useless, not merely relatively, as regards the difference from an allied species. I think this is an important distinction.

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Prof. E.B. Poulton