Ɛpsilon

WCP670

Letter (WCP670.842)

[1]

Holly House, Barking. E.

Decr 13th. 1870

Dear Stainton1

I am not preparing a reply to A. Murray.2 That must be done, if it worth doing at all, by a person well up in the affinities of Coleoptera.

I am simply taking his paper3 as the "pièce de resistance" of my Ent. Soc. Address4 in which I shall try to supplement his paper by some facts which he has overlooked.

I heard yesterday5 from [2] Darwin6 that he had a written on mimicry & from his & your account of it that paper7 will be still less worth answering.

Believe me | Yours very truly│ Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

1
Stainton, Henry Tibbats (1822-1892). British Entomologist. Secretary of the Entomological Society of London 1850-52; Secretary of the Linnean Society 1869-74; Secretary of the Zoological Record Association 1871-86.
2
Murray, Andrew Dickson (1812-1878). British lawyer, entomologist and botanist.
3
ARW refers to Murray, A. 1868. On the geographical relations of the chief coleopterous fauae. [Read 17 December 1868.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 11: 1–89. See WCP1937, ARW to Darwin, 24 November 1870.
4
ARW was preparing his address to be given 23 January 1871. See Wallace, A. R. 1871. The President's Address. Transactions of the Entomological Society Of London. li-lxxv.
5
12 December 1870 correspondence with Darwin.
6
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). British naturalist, geologist and author, notably of On the Origin of Species (1859).
7
Murray, A. 1860. On the disguises of nature: being an inquiry into the laws which regulate external form and colour in plants and animals. Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, n.s. 11: 66-90.

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP670.842)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by Royce, Isobel [2013-05-07] Transcription checked by Costa, Leslie [2020-12-17] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2024-11-11]

Please cite as “WCP670,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP670