WCP5631

[1] [p. 67]

To DR. ARCHDALL REID

Parkstone, Dorset

April 19, 1896.

Dear Sir,—

I am sorry I had not space to refer more fully to your interesting work.¹ The most important point on which I think your views require emendation is on instinct. I see you quote Spalding's experiments, but these have been quite superseded and shown to be seriously incorrect by Prof. Lloyd Morgan. A paper by him in the Fortnightly Review of August, 1893, gives an account of his experiments, and he read a paper on the same subject at the British Association last year. He is now preparing a volume on the [2] [p. 68] subject which will contain the most valuable series of observations yet made on this question. Another point of some importance where I cannot agree with you is your treating dipsomania as a disease, only to be eliminated by drunkenness and its effects. It appears to me to be only a vicious habit or indulgence which would cease to exist in a state of society in which the habit were almost universally reprobated, and the means for its indulgence almost absent. But this is a matter of comparatively small importance.—

Believe me yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.