WCP4450

[1]

Old Orchard,

Broadstone,

Wimborne.

May 12^th. 1910

My dear Poulton

I congratulate you on having recovered from your broken arm. Do you remember the doctor in one of Marryat’s novels who broke his own finger on purpose to enjoy the great pleasure of watching & feeling the process of healing; & then he sayd [sic] — "How much greater would have been the pleasure had it been a leg or an arm"! To which the wit of the Gun room answered — "Or the neck!"

As I must not congratulate you on your second daughter’s approaching wedding please give my hearty [2] congratulations to her.

I do not know Fred Birch’s address now — He was to have left Minas Geraes before ‘Xmas, first for Rio — then for Para, — then (having unfavourable accounts of Para) to Rio again — or to British Guiana. The last letter I had written in Feb[ruar]y he was still uncertain & I am waiting to hear before writing to him.

I certainly thought I had written Prof[essor] Baldwin, & think I must have done so, but it is several years back & I was very busy, & may have forgotten, as I found I really could not read it ^{the book,} as it is so tremendously spun [3] out, & so metaphysical, with about an ounce of fact to a ton of psychological discussion of which even the nomenclature ^terminology is often unintelligible to me.

However, I have now sent an apology, but have told him, I do not think his "Organic Evolution" of much importance, though it may be a real supplementary factor in very rare circumstances.

I am fairly well now & am working slowly on my book (in which I shall just touch on Baldwin’s, or rather Lloyd Morgan’s & your theory.

[4]¹ My view is, that Nature works on so vast a scale, with countless millions of varying individuals, & that the changes, requiring fresh adaptation, are so slow, that "natural selection", (in the Darwinian sense) is able to effect the adaptation in the enormous majority of cases if not in all.

It will take a good deal of pulling to get me away from home again — but when my book is out (if ever) we shall see.

Yours very sincerely| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]