WCP5326

Letter (WCP5326.5870)

[[1]]

July 31/58.

My dear Darwin

You lucubrations have all gone to Press.1 Busk,2 Henslow[,]3 Huxley4 & I all thought that two of your after notes should go to footnotes — 1 That your work was not written with care or for publication.5 — & 2d. the capital illustration regarding cotton seeds fibre.6

I warned you that my tabulation of Bentham7 was very hasty & inaccurate. I introduced discrepancies by 1. Sometimes not always introducing as varieties well known species of Babington8 quoted as synonyms by Bentham yet somehow not alluded to as var[ietie]s [2] 2 Generally by accident but not invariably enumerating as a variety the species itself as well as Bentham[']s 1, 2, 3 &c.

All these errors tend to favor me & their elimination would I doubt not favor you — I was anxious to put the matter as favorably as I conscientiously could to my views, that the evidence might be overwhelming if the result was still against me. —

Most of the discrepancies are probably careless ones.

I have had several talks with Busk about you.

1
Hooker is referring to the publication of: Darwin, C. & Wallace, A. 1858. On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural means of Selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology), 3(9): 45-62.
2
Busk, George (1807-1886). British naval surgeon, zoologist and paleontologist.
3
Henslow, John Stevens (1796-1861). C of E clergyman; Cambridge University professor of Botany and Mineralogy; teacher of Charles Darwin.
4
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895). British biologist known as "Darwin's Bulldog".
5
Darwin did change this endnote to a footnote in the published version, given as 'This MS. work was never intended for publication, and therefore was not written with care.-C.D. 1858' (Darwin, C. & Wallace, A. 1858. On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural means of Selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology), 3(9): 45-62, on 45).
6
Darwin did change this endnote to a footnote in the published version, given as 'I can see no more difficulty in this, than in the planter improving his varieties of the cotton plant.-C.D. 1858' (Darwin, C. & Wallace, A. 1858. On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural means of Selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (Zoology), 3(9): 45-62, on 50).
7
Bentham, G. 1858. Handbook of the British Flora. London, UK: Lovell Reeve. According to the Darwin Correspondence Project, Darwin ʺwas anxious to tabulate the work for his study of varieties in large and small generaʺ (Burkhardt, F., et al. (Eds). 1992. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [p. 131]).
8
Babington, Charles Cardale (1808-1895). British botanist, entomologist and archaeologist.

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP5326.5870)]

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Revision history

Transcribed by Nguyen, Vincent Duong-Vi [2014-09-04] Transcription checked by Barton, Michael [2019-12-20]

Please cite as “WCP5326,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5326