tivated
plants. Never, I should think, has such a vast hypothetical structure
been erected on so flimsy a basis!

The boldness of his statements is amazing, as when he declares (as if it
were a fact of observation) that fluctuating variability, though he
admits it as the origin of all domestic animals and plants, yet "never
leads to the formation of species"! (Hubrecht, p. 216.) There is one
point where he so grossly misinterprets your father that I think you or
some other botanist should point it out. De Vries is said to quote from
"Life and Letters," II., p. 83, where Darwin refers to "chance
variations"--explained three lines on as "the slight differences
selected by which a race or species is at length formed." Yet de Vries
and Hubrecht claim that by "chance variations" Darwin meant "sports" or
"mutations," and therefore agrees with de Vries, while both omit to
refer to the many passages in which, later, he gave less and less weight
to what he termed "single large variations"--the same as de Vries'
"mutations"!--Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO SIR JOSEPH HOOKER

_Broadstone, Wimborne. November 10, 1905._

My dear Sir Joseph,--I am writing to apologise for a great oversight.
When I sent my publishers a list of persons who had contributed to "My
Life" in various ways, your name, which should have been _first_, was
strangely omitted, and the omission was only recalled to me yesterday by
reading your letters to Bates in Clodd's edition of his Amazon book,
which I have just purchased. I now send you a copy by parcel-post, in
the hope that you will excuse the omission to send it sooner.

Now for a more interesting subject, I was extremely pleased and even
greatly surprised, in reading your letters to Bates, to find that at
that early period (1862) you were already strongly convinced of three
facts which are absolutely essential to a comprehension of the method of
organic evolution, but which many writers, even now, almost wholly
ignore. They are (1) the universality and large amount of normal
variability, (2) the extreme rigour of Natural Selection, and (3) that
there is no adequate evidence for, and very much against, the
inheritance of acquired characters.

It was only some years later, when I began to write on the subject and
had to think out the exact mode of action of Natural Selection, that I
myself arrived at (1) and (2), and have ever since dwelt upon