WCP4421

[1]

Broadstone, Dorset.

Dec[embe]^r. 7^th. 1903

My dear Poulton

Thanks for your letters. I will send you the books as soon ^as I get the photo[graph] from Parkstone as I have no duplicates.

What a nuisance big quarto books on descriptive zoology are! No. Do not trouble to ask Mr Buckton for the book, as it will be far too bulky for a traveller & besides it is very little use his naming the species, as all must be collected in small series, & their habits observed as much as possible. I was going to give Birch my copy of your paper, but [2] as you kindly offer to give him one that will do. You can show him the plates of the group & explain to him how interesting it will be to discover the uses of all these strange developments of form.

Where did your biographical ^sketch of me appear? As to giving the £5 to F[red] Birch, though no doubt every pound will be important to him, it will be better & I think he would much prefer it to be an advance, to be repaid by a certain number of illustrations of mimicry &c. & let him give you a receipt, stating, on your part that, should accident or death prevent his [3] supplying them the advance is not to be a charge on his friends.

I have another 8vo. volume of Entomological Papers referring mainly to Eastern Butterflies, but I see that I have either by mistake or because the other vol[ume] was already bound, put in it 2 papers by Butler — monographs of 2 ^S[outh] American genera, Hypnae and Euptychia with col[oure]^d figures & descriptions of numbers of new sp[ecies].

If you can get these two papers the for F[red] Birch, the book will I think be useful to you, as it contains several papers by Felder & Vollenhoven, & 3 of mine.

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

P.S. Birch has got Bates’ Amazon. I shall ^{be pleased} to see Mr Neave — I think the [4]¹ 4⁰ papers would be best in a thin leather cover, & the margins well cut down so as to reduce size & weight as much as possible.

A.R.W. [signature]