CH.  DARWIN.

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9 St. Mark’s Crescent, N.W.  March 11, 1867.

Dear Darwin,—­I return your queries, but cannot answer them with any certainty.  For the Malays I should say Yes to 1, 3, 8, 9, 10 and 17, and No to 12, 13 and 16; but I cannot be certain in any one.  But do you think these things are of much importance?  I am inclined to think that if you could get good direct observations you would find some of them often differ from tribe to tribe, from island to island, and sometimes from village to village.  Some no doubt may be deep-seated, and would imply organic differences; but can you tell beforehand which these are?  I presume the Frenchman shrugs his shoulders whether he is of the Norman, Breton, or Gaulish stock.  Would it not be a good thing to send your List of Queries to some of the Bombay and Calcutta papers? as there must be numbers of Indian judges and other officers who would be interested and would send you hosts of replies.  The Australian papers and New Zealand might also publish them, and then you would have a fine basis to go on.

Is your essay on Variation in Man to be a supplement to your volume on Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants?  I would rather see your second volume on “The Struggle for Existence, etc.,” for I doubt if we have a sufficiency of fair and accurate facts to do anything with man.  Huxley, I believe, is at work upon it.

I have been reading Murray’s volume on the Geographical Distribution of Mammals.  He has some good ideas here and there, but is quite unable to understand Natural Selection, and makes a most absurd mess of his criticism of your views on oceanic islands.

By the bye, what an interesting volume the whole of your materials on that subject would, I am sure, make.—­Yours very sincerely,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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Down, Bromley, Kent, S.E.  March, 1867.

My dear Wallace,—­I thank you much for your two notes.  The case of Julia Pastrana[58] is a splendid addition to my other cases of correlated teeth and hair, and I will add it in correcting the proof of my present volume.  Pray let me hear in course of the summer if you get any evidence about the gaudy caterpillars.  I should much like to give (or quote if published) this idea of yours, if in any way supported, as suggested by you.  It will, however, be a long time hence, for I can see that sexual selection is growing into quite a large subject, which I shall introduce into my essay on Man, supposing that I ever publish it.

I had intended giving a chapter on Man, inasmuch as many call him (not quite truly) an eminently domesticated animal; but I found the subject too large for a chapter.  Nor shall I be capable of treating the subject well, and my sole reason for taking it up is that I am pretty well convinced that sexual selection has played an important part in the formation of races, and sexual selection has always been a subject which has interested me much.