WCP4430

Letter (WCP4430.4713)

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

July 16th. 1907

My dear Poulton1

I enclose you a cutting from today’s "Daily News". I trust it does not represent anything near the truth as regards Continental Opinion. Will you get some of your pupils or friends at Oxford who are acquainted with Continental opinion, to reply to this man who is I believe a "Doctor" — but what else I know not? Mr W. H. Tower’s2 splendid volume on [2] Evolution in Leptinotarsae3 (Pubd. by Carnegie Institution) proves at all events that Nat. Select. & Darwinism are very much alive in America.

I have just heard from Birch’s4 sister, that he & his wife have just reached Bahia on way to Minas’ — His long 6 months delay was due to his father having been turned out of his house & workshops, where he had been for about 30 years — & being obliged to sell all of his [3] stock &c. and go to live on a little house & land he has in the Country — at a place named "Birch" a little N. of Manchester. They seem in excellent spirits — though I much fear the uplands of Brazil — where he has been sent by the Tring people — will not be anything like so rich in Lepidoptera as the Amazon & the Andes,

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Poulton, Edward Bagnall (1856-1943). British entomologist. Hope Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College.
Tower, William Lawrence (1872-1967). American zoologist. Notable for his experimental work in heredity, investigating the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the laws of heredity in beetles.
Tower, William Lawrence. 1906. The Mechanism of Evolution in Leptinotarsa. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Birch, Frederick ("Fred") (1876-1952). British naturalist and natural history collector. Honorary Secretary of the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society.

Please cite as “WCP4430,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4430