Ɛpsilon

WCP6206

Letter (WCP6206.7181)

[1]1

WYKEHAM HOUSE.

OXFORD POST & TELEGR[APH].

Jan[uary]. 8 / 1922

Dear Mr. Wallace2,

I am sending the Civil List payment3 with kindest regards & every good wish for you all in 1923. Mr. Sir J[ames]. Marchant4 has been writing again recently about the portrait. Do you still feel that you would prefer the Linnean Soc[iety]5. to the Royal [Society]6? I quite realize that the Linnean was associated with your father for a longer time & more closely7. [2] On the other hand the artist may prefer his work to be associated with the older Society.

I am desperately busy just now trying to bring out the separata accumulated since 1913 as vol[ume]s. of Hope Reports8. They will fill 5.

There is one quite recent discovery I must tell you of as I know your father would have been so intensely interested in it. [1 word illeg.] of In the various districts of tropical America there are has a dominant group of butterflies (moths coming in also) with a similar conspicuous warning pattern the same on both upper & under side.

[3]9

A One butterfly (Protogonius10) however which is an outlying member of this group in each locality (& changes in pattern as the groups change) has the warning upper side pattern but a dead leaf underside. Now altho[ugh]. it has been known for 150 years no one found out till a few weeks 2 years ago that when it flies, with floating flight, over the trees & you look at it from below, you see the upper side pattern & not the under. In fact W. J. Kaye11 who found this out thought they were flying upside down! [4] But when he got home & studied them he found a few weeks ago only that the underside pattern which looks so opaque is really transparent! and you see the upper side through it!12 It is a most extraordinarily interesting thing.

With kindest regards, | Yours sincerely, | E. B. Poulton13 [signature]

1
The page is numbered WP16/1/112 [1 of 3] in pencil in the top LH corner.
2
Wallace, William Greenell (1871-1951) Electrical engineer, second son and third child of ARW.
3
Civil List pensions are traditionally granted by the Sovereign upon the recommendation of the First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister) to "such persons only as have just claims on the royal beneficence or who by their personal services to the Crown, or by the performance of duties to the public, or by their useful discoveries in science and attainments in literature and the arts, have merited the gracious consideration of their sovereign and the gratitude of their country." It appears that the recipient continued to receive payments after the death of his father.
4
Marchant, James (1857-1956) Free Church minister, social activist and philanthropist. Soon after ARW’s death the three close friends, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Ralph Meldola and James Marchant set up a Committee to raise money to pay for memorials, including a portrait.
5
A learned society founded in 1788 for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history, named in honour of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist.
6
Learned society for Science founded in November 1660 and granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II.
7
ARW's essay "On the tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type", was presented to the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858, along with excerpts from an essay on natural selection which Darwin had disclosed privately to Hooker in 1847, and a letter Darwin had written to Asa Gray in 1857. ARW was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1893.
8

The Hope Reports (1897-1958) Oxford: Printed for Private Circulation.

(Written in connection with the work of the Hope Department of Zoology (Entomology), Oxford University Museum, these are reprints from various periodicals, mainly Transactions of the Entomological Society of London. Editors: vols. 1-20 E. B. Poulton, vols. 21-26 G. D. Hale Carpenter, vols. 27-28 G. C. Varley and B. M. Hobby.)

9
The page is numbered WP16/1/112 [2 of 3] in pencil in the top LH corner and the numeral 2, encircled is written in ink in the top centre of the page.
10
Protogonius species are synonyms of Consul fabius, the tiger leafwing butterfly, the most common species of the genus Consul of subfamily Charaxinae in the family Nymphalidae. The upper sides of the wings have a bright orange and black pattern, with two yellow bands across the angular forewings. This butterfly is part of a mimicry ring; the cryptic undersides of the wings mimic a dead-leaf. It is found all over tropical central America and Amazonia.
11
Kaye, William James (1875-1967) British entomologist who studied Batesian mimicry and selection in butterflies of the Amazon region, particularly of the genus Heliconius, which are unpalatable and exhibit inter- and intraspecific diversification of colour and patterns.
12
Kaye, W. J. (1923) The upper-surface patterns of butterflies seen from beneath in a floating flight Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London 1923 (1/2), pp. xxxvii-xl.
13
Poulton, Edward Bagnall (1856-1943) British evolutionary biologist, friend of ARW and lifelong advocate of natural selection. He did pioneering work on warning or protective colouration in animals and became Hope Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford in 1893.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6206.7181)]

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]

Envelope (WCP6206.7182)

Envelope addressed to "W. G. Wallace Esqre, Doves' Hill Farm, Ensbury Mt., Bournemouth", with stamp, postmarked "OXFORD | 10 | 8 JAN23". [Envelope (WCP6206.7182)]

Please cite as “WCP6206,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6206