This it certainly does, but the writer was highly imaginative, and, like all the other anticipators of Darwin, did not perceive the whole scope of his idea, being, as he himself says, not sufficiently acquainted with the facts of nature.

His anticipations, however, of diverging lines of descent from a common ancestor, and of the transmission of disease germs by means of insects, are perfectly clear and very striking.

As you yourself made known one of the anticipators of Darwin, whom he himself had overlooked, you are the right person to make this known in any way you think proper.  As you have so recently been in America, you might perhaps ascertain from the librarian of the public library in Boston, or from some of your biological friends there, what is known of the writer and of his subsequent history.

If the house at Down is ever dedicated to Darwin’s memory it would seem best to preserve this little book there; if not you can dispose of it as you think best.—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

P.S.—­Two of my books have been translated into Japanese:  will you ascertain whether the Bodleian would like to have them?

* * * * *

TO PROF.  POULTON[42]

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset, June 3, 1913.

My dear Poulton,—­I am very glad you have changed your view about the “Sleeper” lectures being a “fake.”  The writer was too earnest, and too clear a thinker, to descend to any such trick.  And for what?  “Agnostic” is not in Shakespeare, but it may well have been used by someone before Huxley.  The parts of your Address of which you send me slips are excellent, and I am sure will be of great interest to your audience.  I quite agree with your proposal that the “Lectures” shall be given to the Linnean Society.—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO MR. E. SMEDLEY

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset.  August 26, 1913.

Dear Mr. Smedley,—­I am glad to see you looking so jolly.  I return the photo to give to some other friend.  Mr. Marchant, the lecturer you heard, is a great friend of mine, but is now less dogmatic.  The Piltdown skull does not prove much, if anything!

The papers are wrong about me.  I am not writing anything now; perhaps shall write no more.  Too many letters and home business.  Too much bothered with many slight ailments, which altogether keep me busy attending to them.  I am like Job, who said “the grasshopper was a burthen” to him!  I suppose its creaking song.—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO MR. W.J.  FARMER

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Wimborne. 1913.

Dear Sir,—­ ...  I presume your question “Why?” as to the varying colour of individual hairs and feathers, and the regular varying of adjacent hairs, etc., to form the surface pattern, applies to the ultimate cause which enables those patterns to be hereditary, and, in the case of birds, to be reproduced after moulting yearly.