WCP4449

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

Nov^r. 22nd. 1909

My dear Poulton¹

Many thanks for the copy of your most interesting new book.² I have first read your excellent article on "Colour &c." in which you have brought together much interesting & fresh matter. I have also read your Appendices on the self-deluded specialists — Bateson,³ Punnett,⁴ De Vries,⁵ & Co., and am especially delighted that you have brought up so many fresh passages from Darwin’s⁶ letters showing how long he [2] considered and rejected their & De Vries’ special views. — But unfortunately, they & their supporters are so tremendously conceited and blatant, that the public will for long believe their confident assertions of having made the "greatest discoveries" of the century.

I shall read the rest of your book at my leisure, as it is only now after nearly a year of interruptions through bad eyes, & various other slight illnesses, that I am just beginning again at my own [3] long neglected book.

I notice one passage (in p. 45) where you say that Darwin had to maintain his views as to permanence of oceanic basins &c. against Lyell,⁷ Hooker⁸ & myself. I remember Darwin writing⁹ to me, when he sent me "The Origin"¹⁰ — that I should be sure to disagree with him as to "Oceanic Islands". This was founded wholly on my early paper on the "Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago"¹¹ — written before I had seen "The Origin" ^{was written} and in which I merely adopted the general views of other writers without any [4] knowledge of the subject myself. From the moment I read the "Origin", I was convinced of the correctness of Darwin’s view, and a considerable portion of my work since has been in getting fresh evidence and new arguments in favour of the "Permanence of Oceanic & Contl. Areas" and have been as much sneered at & ridiculed for it, even by geologists, as Darwin expected to be! I see, by referring to the paper, that I supported, the adverse view ^partly from his "Coral Reefs"¹² (wh. I had read before going to the East) & in which he advocated enormous bands of alternate elevation & depression in the Pacific, implying Continental land at some early period! It was to this unconsidered adoption of others’ views that Darwin referred when he wrote ^{(in 1859)} that he “differed wholly from me” on this point.

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]