TO PROF.  MELDOLA

Frith Hill, Godalming.  April 8, 1885.

My dear Meldola,—­Your letter in Nature last week “riz my dander,” as the Yankees say, and, for once in a way, we find ourselves deadly enemies prepared for mortal combat, armed with steel (pens) and prepared to shed any amount of our own—­ink.  Consequently I rushed into the fray with a letter to Nature intended to show that you are as wrong (as wicked) as are the Russians in Afghanistan.  Having, however, the most perfect confidence that the battle will soon be over,... —­Yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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The following letter refers to the theory of physiological selection which had recently been propounded by Romanes, and which Prof.  Meldola had criticised in Nature, xxxix. 384.

TO PROF.  MELDOLA

Frith Hill, Godalming.  August 28, 1886.

My dear Meldola,—­I have just read your reply to Romanes in Nature, and so far as your view goes I agree, but it does not go far enough.  Professor Newton has called my attention to a passage in Belt’s “Nicaragua,” pp. 207-8, in which he puts forth very clearly exactly your view.  I find I had noted the explanation as insufficient, and I hear that in Darwin’s copy there is “No!  No!” against it.  It seems, however, to me to summarise all that is of the slightest value in Romanes’ wordy paper.  I have asked Newton (to whom I had lent it) to forward to you at Birmingham a proof of my paper in the Fortnightly, and I shall be much obliged if you will read it carefully, and, if you can, “hold a brief” for me at the British Association in this matter.  You will see that a considerable part of my paper is devoted to a demonstration of the fallacy of that part of “Romanes” which declares species to be distinguished generally by useless characters, and also that “simultaneous variations” do not usually occur.

On the question of sterility, which, as you well observe, is the core of the question, I think I show that it could not work in the way Romanes puts it.  The objection to Belt’s and your view is, also, that it would not work unless the “sterility variation” was correlated with the “useful variation.”  You assume, I think, this correlation, when you speak of two of your varieties, B. and K., being less fertile with the parent form.  Without correlation they could not be so, only some few of them.  Romanes always speaks of his physiological variations as being independent, “primary,” in which case, as I show, they could hardly ever survive.  At the end of my paper I show a correlation which is probably general and sufficient.