WCP6797

[1]

Granies : Rossshire: Scotland

Oct 10/[18]89

Dear M^r. Gulick,

I duly received you letter together with your reply to M^r. Wallace, and herewith enclose the answer which has just been returned by the Editors of "Nature".

On reading your MS I do not like to incur the responsibility of condensing it to the extent which "Nature" would probably require for its publication in that periodical — the truth being that the editor dislikes controversy in his columns. However, I do not really see how your answers could be much cut down without loss of effect. Still, if you continue to desire me to get you a hearing in "Nature" at any cost, I will do my best; and, therefore, until I hear from you again, will retain your MS for further instructions. [2]

But now, I want to put it to you whether it is worth your while to bother with "Nature" at all. Anything published in a periodical must be transitory in its effect. What it appears to me that you ought now to do is to publish an independent treatise, enlarging the whole mass of your thought, together with the extraordinarily cogent facts on which it in large part reposes — i.e. your researches on land shells. This would not only be the most dignified way of meeting your critics, but by far the most potent way of impressing your views on the minds of biologists.

It is all very well to begin by publishing in L.S. [Linnean Society] papers; but [3] when these are scattered over long intervals of time their influence is, comparatively speaking, evaporated — especially because their subject-matter is so complex and hard to grasp that the only chance for the average mind is to have the whole system of your thought before it at one time and in one place.

The labours of writing such a treatise would not now be great, as you could use what you have already written with virtually no alteration. Nor would the expense be great, seeing that wood-cuts need not be introduced, even to illustrate the shells, while the letter-press need not run to more than 200 or 300 pages. [4]

I really believe that such a book would be of the greatest service in spreading your views, and therefore (according to my persuasion) in addressing the truth regarding evolution. Probably enough the book might not pay all its expenses — but if only 100 copies were sold and 100 more distributed by yourself, they would find their way into every mind much worth influencing in our own generation; while the balance would go to receiving a larger share of recognition in the next.

Please let me know what you think of this suggestion, and believe me to remain

Yours very truly, | G. J. Romanes [signature]

Of course your reply to W. is a crushing one; but in a book might be seem more absolute by not being so condensed.¹