I cannot believe that he can want any sympathy from a man he says has wilfully and grossly plagiarised him, unless he feels that his accusations were unfounded.  If he does so, and will write to me to that effect (for publication, if I wish, after his death), I will accept it as full reparation and write him such a letter as you suggest.—­Believe me yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

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SIR W.T.  THISELTON-DYER TO A.R.  WALLACE

Kew.  September 27, 1897.

Dear Mr. Wallace,—­I am afraid I have been rather guilty of an impertinence which I hope you will forgive.

Romanes is an old acquaintance of mine of many years’ standing.  Personally, I like him very much; but for his writings I confess I have no great admiration.

Pray believe me I had no mission of any sort on his part to write to you.  But I feel so sorry for him that when he told me how much he regretted that he did not stand well with you, I could not resist writing to tell you of the calamities that have befallen him.

I must confess I was in total ignorance of what you tell me.  I don’t see how, under the circumstances, you can do anything.  I was never more surprised in my life, in fact, than when I read your letter.  The whole thing is too childishly preposterous.

Romanes laments over me because he says I wilfully misunderstand his theory.  The fact is, poor fellow, that I do not think he understands it himself.  If his life had been destined to be prolonged I should have done all in my power to have induced him to occupy himself more with observation and less with mere logomachy.

I cannot get him to face the fact that natural hybrids are being found to be more and more common amongst plants.  At the beginning of the century it was supposed that there were some sixty recognisable species of willows in the British Isles:  now they are cut down to about sixteen, and all the rest are resolved into hybrids.—­Ever sincerely,

W.T.  THISELTON-DYER.

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Wallace was a seeker after Truth who was never shy of his august mistress, whatever robes she wore.  “I feel within me,” wrote Darwin to Henslow, “an instinct for truth, or knowledge, or discovery, of something of the same nature as the instinct of virtue.”  This was equally true of Wallace.  He had a fine reverence for truth, beauty and love, and he feared not to expose error.  He paid no respect to time-honoured practices and opinions if he believed them to be false.  Vaccination came under his searching criticism, and in the face of nearly the whole medical faculty he denounced it as quackery condemned by the very evidence used to defend it.  He very carefully examined the claims of phrenology, which had been laughed out of court by scientific men, and he came to the conclusion that