Ɛpsilon

WCP5316

Letter (WCP5316.5860)

[1]1

DOWN,

BECKENHAM, KENT.

RAILWAY STATION

ORPINGTON. S.E.R.

Aug[ust]. 21st 1881

My dear Hooker2

I cannot aid you much, or at all. I sh[oul]d. think that no one could have thought on the modification of species, without thinking of representative species. — But I feel sure that no discussion of any importance had been published on this subject before the Origin;3 for if I had known of it I sh[oul]d. [2] assuredly have alluded to it in the Origin, as I wished to gain support from all quarters. I did not then know of Von Buch[']s4 view (alluded to in my Historical Introduction in all the later editions).5 Von Buch published his "Isles Canaries" in 1836,6 & he here briefly argues that [3]7 plants spread over a continent & vary, & the varieties in time come to be species. He also argues that closely allied species are have been thus formed in the separate valleys of the Canary Islands, but not on the upper & open parts.8 I have not Baer's9 papers; but, as far as I remember, the subject is not fully discussed by him. — I quite agree about [4] Wallace's position on the ocean and continent question.10 — To return to Geograph[ical]. Distribution: As far as I know, no one ever discussed the meaning of the relation of between representative species before I did, &, as I suppose, Wallace did in his paper before [the] Linn[ean]. Soc[iety].11 Von Buch's is the nearest approach to such discussion known to me.

Ever yours | Ch. Darwin12 [signature]

1
The folio number "528" appears here.
2
Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1817-1911). British botanist and explorer, founder of geographical botany. He succeeded his father William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865) as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on his death and held the post for 20 years.
3
Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life London, John Murray.
4
von Buch, Christian Leopold (Leopold von Buch) (1774-1853). German geologist and palaeontologist, one of the most important contributors to geology in the first half of the nineteenth century. Von Buch was the first naturalist to suggest geographic speciation, in 1825.
5
In editions of Origin after the first, published in 1859, in the chapter entitled "An historical sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species" the author mentions Von Buch’s belief expressed in his Description Physique des Îles Canaries that 'varieties slowly become changed into permanent species, which are no longer capable of intercrossing'.
6
In 1815 von Buch visited the Canary Islands with Christian Smith, a Norwegian botanist, initiating his studies on the production and activity of volcanoes. His observations convinced him that these and other islands of the Atlantic owed their existence to volcanic action, whereas the groups of islands in the South Sea were the remains of a pre-existing continent. The original publication of Physical Description of the Canary Islands, was in German: Buch, L. von (1825). Physicalische Beschreibung der Canarischen Inseln Berlin, Hofdruckerei der Königlichen Akademie. The French version mentioned in Darwin’s Historical Introduction to Origin was published later: Buch, L. von (1836). Description physique des Îles Canaries, suivie d'une indication des principaux volcans du globe Traduite de l’allemand par C. Boulanger. Paris, F. G. Levrault.
7
The folio number "529" appears here.
8
The author's marginal annotation appears here: "I could lend you Von Buch's book, if you like. I have just consulted the passage".
9
Baer, Karl Ernst Ritter von, (Karl Maksimovich Baer) (1792-1876). Estonian naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist and geographer and a founding father of embryology. From his studies of comparative embryology, Baer had believed in the transmutation of species, but later rejected Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In the fifth edition of Origin (1869)., Darwin added a Historical Sketch giving due credit to naturalists who had preceded him in publishing the opinion that species undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life have descended by true generation from pre-existing forms. Von Baer’s view, expressed in 1859, that distinct forms are descended from a single parent-form was chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution.
10
The year before the date of the letter, ARW had published (1880). Island Life: or, The phenomena and causes of insular faunas and floras, including a revision and attempted solution of the problem of geological climates. London: Macmillan & Co. This surveyed the problems of the dispersal and speciation of plants and animals on islands which he categorized, following Darwin, as oceanic or continental. Unlike Darwin’s theories of erratic spread to account for the discontinuous distribution of types, ARW favoured theories of continuous spread followed by selective extinctions thus creating the appearance of gaps.
11
This is possibly Wallace, A. R. (1860). On the zoological geography of the Malay Archipelago [read 3 November 1859] Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 4: 172-184. Later, before the date of the letter, he published Wallace, A. R. (1876). The Geographical Distribution of Animals With a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth's Surface. 2 vols. London, Macmillan & Co.
12
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). English naturalist and geologist, jointly with ARW originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection and author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP5316.5860)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP5316,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5316