[1]1
Broadstone, Wimborne2
Dec[embe]r 22nd. 19053
My dear Fred
As to morrow [sic] is post day I send you a word, with best wishes for the new year & hopes that it may find you in the land of promise — Santa Catalina.
I enclose a cutting4 about a curiou<s> form of protective motion, which I do not remember to have seen described before though I have observed it in a less degree in the East. Other species wo<uld> probably have the same hab<it> but it will of course only ha<ve> developed in rather wind<?>[?]
I think I have got <you?>5 [2] <a?> purchaser for butterflies, but shall hear again shortly.
With regard to your scruples about killing birds they may perhaps be to some extent alleviated by the consideration that, the struggle for existence being necessarily so severe, that the numbers killed off in various ways each successive year may be considered to be a fixed quantity. Those you kill, therefore, <will?> certainly make room for others <to> live, or to have a better <quality?> of life, and death <will be?> certainly not [3] on the average more painful than that by hunger, wet, snakes, or birds or beasts of prey. You really do not add to the annual deaths, only destroy a very few, comparitively, [sic] by other mea<ns> than nature employs.
I must now go to the post — so farewell for <a> week or two.
Yours very sincerely | Alfred R. Wallac<e> [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP750.922)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
FIGHT BETWEEN A SOW AND A STOAT.
"Vulp" writes to the "Times",1 under date the 4th inst. : — I was a witness this morning of an extraordinary battle between a large black sow and a stoat (by no means a large one of its kind), of which I am sure an account will be most interesting to all who[?] give any attention to natural hist[ory] [two words illeg.] walking down a lane in Somerset, across which there is a gate. When I came to about fifteen yards of the gate I was struck by the curious behaviour of the sow at the gate, who was jumping up and down, and I quickly noticed she was being attacked by a small stoat, who again and again flew at the sow's legs to bite them, which avoided by trying to trample on the stoat. The stoat with lightning quickness escaped this, and kept returning to the attack, after retreating perhaps a yard from the pig. At last the stoat made a rush at the sow, and jumped clean on to her back, where it held on for a few seconds. The sow then, with a twist of her body, threw the stoat 2ft. or 3ft. into the air, and it fell on its back on the ground, probably hurt, for it gave up the combat and disappeared. Strangely enough, when fishing some hours after the above event, and half a mile from the scene of the occurrence, I came upon a stoat in a dazed condition and hardly able to move, on the banks of the River Barle.2 Possibly it was the same stoat.
Status: Draft transcription [Enclosure (WCP750.1026)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP750,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 9 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP750