I note however that he is quite ignorant that Proctor, forty years ago, gave full reasons for this “capture” theory in his “Expanse of Heaven,” and also that the same writer showed that the Milky Way could not have the enormous lateral extension he gives to it, but that it cannot really be much flattened.  He does not even mention the proofs given of this both by Proctor and, I think, by Herbert Spencer, while in Mr. Webb’s volume (opposite p. 212) is a diagram showing the “Coal Sack” as a “vacant lane” running quite through and across the successive spiral extensions laterally of the galaxy, without any reference or a word of explanation that such features, of which there are many, really demonstrate the untenability of such extension.

An even more original and extremely interesting part of Mr. See’s work is his very satisfactory solution of the hitherto unsolved geological problem of the origin of all the great mountain ranges of the world, in Chapters X., XI., and XII. of Mr. Webb’s volume.  It seems quite complete except for the beginnings, but I suppose it is a result of the formation of the earth by accretion and not by expulsion, by heating and not by cooling....—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

II.—­Spiritualism

“The completely materialistic mind of my youth and early manhood has been slowly moulded into the socialistic, spiritualistic, and theistic mind I now exhibit—­a mind which is, as my scientific friends think, so weak and credulous in its declining years, as to believe that fruit and flowers, domestic animals, glorious birds and insects, wool, cotton, sugar and rubber, metals and gems, were all foreseen and foreordained for the education and enjoyment of man.  The whole cumulative argument of my ‘World of Life’ is that in its every detail it calls for the agency of a mind ... enormously above and beyond any human mind ...  Whether this Unknown Reality is a single Being and acts everywhere in the universe as direct creator, organiser, and director of every minutest motion ... or through ‘infinite grades of beings,’ as I suggest, comes to much the same thing.  Mine seems a more clear and intelligible supposition ... and it is the teaching of the Bible, of Swedenborg, and of Milton.”—­Letter from A.R.  Wallace to JAMES MARCHANT, written in 1913.

The letters on Spiritualism which Wallace wrote cast further light on the personal attitude of mind which he maintained towards that subject.  He was an unbiased scientific investigator, commencing on the “lower level” of spirit phenomena, such as raps and similar physical manifestations of “force by unseen intelligences,” and passing on to a clearer understanding of the phenomena of mesmerism and telepathy; to the materialisation of, and conversation with, the spirits of those who had been known in the body, until the conviction of life after death, as the inevitable crowning conclusion to the long process of evolution, was reached in the remarkable chapter with which he concludes “The World of Life”—­an impressive prose poem.