I am in the second volume of your book, and I have been astonished at the immense number of interesting facts you have brought together.  I read the chapter on Pangenesis first, for I could not wait.  I can hardly tell you how much I admire it.  It is a positive comfort to me to have any feasible explanation of a difficulty that has always been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up till a better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly possible.  You have now fairly beaten Spencer on his own ground, for he really offered no solution of the difficulties of the problem.  The incomprehensible minuteness and vast numbers of the physiological germs or atoms (Which themselves must be compounded of numbers of Spencer’s physiological units) is the only difficulty, but that is only on a par with the difficulties in all conceptions of matter, space, motion, force, etc.  As I understood Spencer, his physiological units were identical throughout each species, but slightly different in each different species; but no attempt was made to show how the identical form of the parent or ancestors came to be built up of such units.

The only parts I have yet met with where I somewhat differ from your views are in the chapter on the Causes of Variability, in which I think several of your arguments are unsound:  but this is too long a subject to go into now.

Also, I do not see your objection to sterility between allied species having been aided by Natural Selection.  It appears to me that, given a differentiation of a species into two forms, each of which was adapted to a special sphere of existence, every slight degree of sterility would be a positive advantage, not to the individuals who were sterile, but to each form.  If you work it out, and suppose the two incipient species A, B to be divided into two groups, one of which contains those which are fertile when the two are crossed, the other being slightly sterile, you will find that the latter will certainly supplant the former in the struggle for existence, remembering that you have shown that in such a cross the offspring would be more vigorous than the pure breed, and would therefore certainly soon supplant them, and as these would not be so well adapted to any special sphere of existence as the pure species A and B, they would certainly in their turn give way to A and B.

I am sure all naturalists will be disgusted at the malicious and ignorant article in the Athenaeum.  It is a disgrace to the paper, and I hope someone will publicly express the general opinion of it.  We can expect no good reviews of your book till the quarterlies or best monthlies come out....  I shall be anxious to see how Pangenesis is received.—­Believe me yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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Down, Bromley, Kent, S.E.  February 27, 1868.