I am much pleased to hear that Huxley has taken to gardening.  I have no doubt he will do some good work with his saxifrages.  For myself the personal attention to my plants occupies all my spare time, and I derive constant enjoyment from the mere contemplation of the infinite variety of forms of leaf and flower, and modes of growth, and strange peculiarities of structure which are the source of fresh puzzles and fresh delights year by year.  With best wishes and many thanks for the trouble you are taking on my behalf, believe me yours very faithfully,

ALFRED B. WALLACE.

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In 1902 the Standard announced that the degree of D.C.L. was to be conferred upon him by the University of Wales.  He wrote to Miss Dora Best, who had sent him the information: 

I have not seen the Standard.  But I suppose it is about the offer of a degree by the University of Wales.  You will not be surprised to hear that I have declined it “with thanks.”  The bother, the ceremony, the having perhaps to get a blue or yellow or scarlet gown! and at all events new black clothes and a new topper! such as I have not worn this twenty years.  Luckily I had a good excuse in having committed the same offence before.  Some ten years back I declined the offer of a degree from Cambridge, so that settled it.

P.S.—­Having already degrees two—­LL.D. (Dublin) and D.C.L. (Oxford)—­I might have quoted Shakespeare:  “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,” etc.  But I didn’t!—­A.R.W.

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In 1908 he received the Order of Merit, the highest honour conferred upon him.  To his friend Mrs. Fisher he wrote: 

Dear Mrs. Fisher,—­Is it not awful—­two more now!  I should think very few men have had three such honours within six months!  I have never felt myself worthy of the Copley Medal—­and as to the Order of Merit—­to be given to a red-hot Radical, Land Nationaliser, Socialist, Anti-Militarist, etc. etc. etc., is quite astounding and unintelligible!...

There is another thing you have not heard yet, but it will be announced soon.  Sir W. Crookes, as Secretary of the Royal Institution, wrote to me two weeks back asking me very strongly to give them a lecture at their opening meeting (third week in January) appropriate to the Jubilee of the “Origin of Species.”  I was very unwell at the time—­could eat nothing, etc.—­and was going to decline positively, having nothing more to say!  But while lying down, vaguely thinking about it, an idea flashed upon me of a new treatment of the whole subject of Darwinism, just suitable for a lecture to a R.I. audience.  I felt at once there was something that ought to be said, and that I should like to say—­so I actually wrote and accepted, provisionally.  My voice has so broken that unless I can improve it I fear not being heard, but Crookes promised to read