Pray do not attach any weight to my opinions as to the review.  It is very clever, but the writer seems a little like those critics who know an author’s or an artist’s meaning better than they do themselves.

My house is now in the hands of a contractor, but I am wall-building, etc., and very busy.—­With best wishes, believe me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

Down, Beckenham, Kent.  July 12, 1871.

My dear Wallace,—­Very many thanks.  As soon as I read your letter I determined, not to print the paper, notwithstanding my eldest daughter, who is a very good critic, thought it so interesting as to be worth reprinting.  Then my wife came in, and said, “I do not much care about these things and shall therefore be a good judge whether it is very dull.”  So I will leave my decision open for a day or two.  Your letter has been, and will be, of use to me in other ways:  thus I had quite forgotten that you had taken up the case of the giraffe in your first memoir, and I must look to this.  I feel very doubtful how far I shall succeed in answering Mivart; it is so difficult to answer objections to doubtful points and make the discussion readable.  I shall make only a selection.  The worst of it is that I cannot possibly hunt through all my references for isolated points; it would take me three weeks of intolerably hard work.  I wish I had your power of arguing clearly.  At present I feel sick of everything, and if I could occupy my time and forget my daily discomforts or little miseries, I would never publish another word.  But I shall cheer up, I daresay, soon, being only just got over a bad attack.  Farewell.  God knows why I bother you about myself.

I can say nothing more about missing links than what I have said.  I should rely much on pre-Silurian times; but then comes Sir W. Thomson like an odious spectre.  Farewell.—­Yours most sincerely,

CH.  DARWIN.

I was grieved to see in the Daily News that the madman about the flat earth has been threatening your life.  What an odious trouble this must have been to you.

P.S.—­There is a most cutting review of me in the Quarterly:[89] I have only read a few pages.  The skill and style make me think of Mivart.  I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men.  This Quarterly review tempts me to republish Ch.  Wright, even if not read by anyone, just to show that someone will say a word against Mivart, and that his (i.e.  Mivart’s) remarks ought not to be swallowed without some reflection.

I quite agree with what you say that Mivart fully intends to be honourable; but he seems to me to have the mind of a most able lawyer retained to plead against us, and especially against me.  God knows whether my strength and spirit will last out to write a chapter versus Mivart and others; I do so hate controversy, and feel I should do it so badly.