I wish I could get into the habit of giving chapter and verse for every fact and extract, but I am too lazy and generally in a hurry, having to consult books against time when in London for a day.

However, I will try and do something to mend this matter should I have to prepare another edition.

I return you Forel’s letter.  It does not advance the question much, neither do I think it likely that even the complete observation he thinks necessary would be of much use; because it may well be that the ova or larvae or imagos of the beetles are not carried systematically by the ants, but only occasionally owing to some exceptional circumstances.  This might produce a great effect in distribution, yet be so rare as never to come under observation.

Several of your remarks in previous letters I shall carefully consider.  I know that, compared with the extent of the subject, my book is in many parts crude and ill-considered; but I thought, and still think, it better to make some generalisations wherever possible, as I am not at all afraid of having to alter my views in many points of detail.  I was so overwhelmed with zoological details that I never went through the Geological Society’s Journal as I ought to have done, and as I mean to do before writing more on the subject.

With best wishes, believe me yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

Rose Hill, Dorking.  December 13, 1876.

My dear Darwin,—­Many thanks for your new book on “Crossing Plants,” which I have read with much interest.  I hardly expected, however, that there would have been so many doubtful and exceptional cases.  I fancy that the results would have come out better had you always taken weights instead of heights; and that would have obviated the objection that will, I daresay, be made, that height proves nothing, because a tall plant may be weaker, less bulky and less vigorous than a shorter one.  Of course no one who knows you or who takes a general view of your results will say this, but I daresay it will be said.  I am afraid this book will not do much or anything to get rid of the one great objection, that the physiological characteristic of species, the infertility of hybrids, has not yet been produced.  Have you ever tried experiments with plants (if any can be found) which for several centuries have been grown under very different conditions, as for instance potatoes on the high Andes and in Ireland?  If any approach to sterility occurred in mongrels between these it would be a grand step.  The most curious point you have brought out seems to me the slight superiority of self-fertilisation over fertilisation with another flower of the same plant, and the most important result, that difference of constitution is the essence of the benefit of cross-fertilisation.  All you now want is to find the neutral point where the benefit is at its maximum, any greater difference being prejudicial.