His facts, it is true, are at present not very numerous, but they all point one way.  They seem to me to lend an immense support to my view of the great importance of protection in determining colour, for it has not only prevented the eatable species from ever acquiring bright colours, spots, or markings injurious to them, but it has also conferred on all the nauseous species distinguishing marks to render their uneatableness more protective to them than it would otherwise be.  When you have read my book I shall be glad of any hints for corrections if it comes to another edition.  I was horrified myself by coming accidentally on several verbal inelegancies after all my trouble in correcting, and I have no doubt there are many more important errors.—­Believe me, dear Darwin, yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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Down, Bromley, Kent, S.E.  March 22, 1869.

My dear Wallace,—­I have finished your book.[78] It seems to me excellent, and at the same time most pleasant to read.  That you ever returned alive is wonderful after all your risks from illness and sea voyages, especially that most interesting one to Waigiou and back.  Of all the impressions which I have received from your book, the strongest is that your perseverance in the cause of science was heroic.  Your descriptions of catching the splendid butterflies have made me quite envious, and at the same time have made me feel almost young again, so vividly have they brought before my mind old days when I collected, though I never made such captures as yours.  Certainly collecting is the best sport in the world.  I shall be astonished if your book has not a great success; and your splendid generalisations on geographical distribution, with which I am familiar from your papers, will be new to most of your readers.  I think I enjoyed most the Timor case, as it is best demonstrated; but perhaps Celebes is really the most valuable.  I should prefer looking at the whole Asiatic continent as having formerly been more African in its fauna, than admitting the former existence of a continent across the Indian Ocean.  Decaisne’s paper on the flora of Timor, in which he points out its close relation to that of the Mascarene Islands, supports your view.  On the other hand, I might advance the giraffes, etc., in the Sewalik deposits.  How I wish someone would collect the plants of Banca!  The puzzle of Java, Sumatra and Borneo is like the three geese and foxes:  I have a wish to extend Malacca through Banca to part of Java and thus make three parallel peninsulas, but I cannot get the geese and foxes across the river.

Many parts of your book have interested me much:  I always wished to hear an independent judgment about the Rajah Brooke, and now I have been delighted with your splendid eulogium on him.

With respect to the fewness and inconspicuousness of the flowers in the tropics, may it not be accounted for by the hosts of insects, so that there is no need for the flowers to be conspicuous?  As, according to Humboldt, fewer plants are social in the tropical than in the temperate regions, the flowers in the former would not make so great a show.