Ɛpsilon

WCP4532

Letter (WCP4532.4839)

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

April 1st. 1896

My dear Meldola1

We should be very pleased to see you & Mrs. Meldola2 here but there are no trains on Sunday. On Monday we may be out ourselves, but if you come on Tuesday or on the day you return to town on your way we should be glad to see you at any time. Will3 is here now for a few days but [2] returns on Saturday as he wants to join his "Clarion" Cycling Club which meets at Bakewell in Derbyshire for Easter. Last Sunday he started about 11 am. for Shaftesbury, & returned about 6.30 — a very hilly road & a strong N. W. wind — 55 miles in all! To day he & a friend are gone to Salisbury & Stonehenge! What a glorious thing cycles are for young people.

[3] I was very much pleased with your Ent. Soc. Address, which I hope will encourage the theorists, without discouraging the species-men. I am writing an article on one of my pet subjects — the utility of all specific characters4 — as a counterblast to Romanes5last book — "Darwin & After Darwin"6 – Pt. 2.

I have also written a review of Cope’s7 last book8 for "Nature"9 — which ought [4] to appear this week or next. He is a bright example of a "fact" man who gets hopelessly muddled when he tackles a theory.

Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Prof. R. Meldola

1
Meldola, Raphael (1849-1915). British chemist and entomologist.
2
Meldola (née Davis), Ella Frederica (1863-1932). Wife of Raphael Meldola.
3
Wallace, William Greenell (1871-1951). Son of ARW.
4
Wallace, A. R. 1896. The problem of utility: Are specific characters always or generally useful? Journal of the Linnean Society, Zoology 25: 481-496.
5
Romanes, George John (1848-1894). Darwin and after Darwin. An exposition of the Darwinian theory and a discussion of post-Darwinian questions. Chicago: The Open court publishing company.
6
Romanes, George John. 1895. Darwin and after Darwin. An exposition of the Darwinian theory and a discussion of post-Darwinian questions.
7
Cope, Edward Drinker (1840-1897). American palaeontologist and comparative anatomist.
8
Cope, Edward Drinker. 1896. The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.
9
Wallace, A. R. 1896. Old and new theories of evolution. Nature 53 (1381): 553-555.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4532.4839)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Lord, Annette [2012-07-23] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-01-15] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

Please cite as “WCP4532,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4532