air) with constitution. Assume that a dusky individual best escaped
miasma and you will readily see what I mean. I persuaded the
Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army to send printed
forms to the surgeons of all regiments in tropical countries to
ascertain this point, but I daresay I shall never get any returns.
Secondly, I suspect that a sort of sexual selection has been the most
powerful means of changing the races of man. I can show that the
different races have a widely different standard of beauty. Among
savages the most powerful men will have the pick of the women, and they
will generally leave the most descendants.

I have collected a few notes on Man, but I do not suppose I shall ever
use them. Do you intend to follow out your views, and if so would you
like at some future time to have my few references and notes?

I am sure I hardly know whether they are of any value, and they are at
present in a state of chaos.

There is much more that I should like to write but I have not
strength.--Believe me, dear Wallace, yours very sincerely,

CH. DARWIN.

Our aristocracy is handsomer? (more hideous according to a Chinese or
negro) than the middle classes, from pick of women; but oh what a scheme
is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection! I fear my letter will
be barely intelligible to you.

* * * * *

_5 Westbourne Grove Terrace, W. May 29 [1864]._

My dear Darwin,--You are always so ready to appreciate what others do,
and especially to overestimate my desultory efforts, that I cannot be
surprised at your very kind and flattering remarks on my papers. I am
glad, however, that you have made a few critical observations, and am
only sorry you were not well enough to make more, as that enables me to
say a few words in explanation.

My great fault is haste. An idea strikes me, I think over it for a few
days, and then write away with such illustrations as occur to me while
going on. I therefore look at the subject almost solely from one point
of view. Thus in my paper on Man[41] I aim solely at showing that brutes
are modified in a _great variety_ of ways by Natural Selection, but that
in _none of these particular_ ways can man be modified, because of the
superiority of his intellect. I therefore no doubt overlook a few
smaller points in which Natural Selection may still act on men and
brutes alike. Colour is one of them, and I have alluded to this in
correlati