omological Society Presidential Address, and am printing a second
edition of my "Essays," with a few notes and additions. Very glad to see
(by your writing yourself) that you are better, and with kind regards to
all your family, believe me, dear Darwin, yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

_Holly House, Barking, E. January 27, 1871._

Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your first volume,[82] which I have just
finished reading through with the greatest pleasure and interest, and I
have also to thank you for the great tenderness with which you have
treated me and my heresies.

On the subject of sexual selection and protection you do not yet
convince me that I am wrong, but I expect your heaviest artillery will
be brought up in your second volume, and I may have to capitulate. You
seem, however, to have somewhat misunderstood my exact meaning, and I do
not think the difference between us is quite so great as you seem to
think it. There are a number of passages in which you argue against the
view that the female has, in any large number of cases, been "specially
modified" for protection, or that _colour_ has _generally_ been obtained
by either sex for purposes of protection.

But my view is, and I thought I had made it clear, that the female has
(in most cases) been simply prevented from acquiring the gay tints of
the male (even when there was a tendency for her to inherit it) because
it was hurtful; and, that when protection is not needed, gay colours are
so generally acquired by both sexes as to show that inheritance by both
sexes of colour variations is the most usual, when _not prevented from
acting_ by Natural Selection.

The colour itself may be acquired either by sexual selection or by other
unknown causes. There are, however, difficulties in the very wide
application you give to sexual selection which at present stagger me,
though no one was or is more ready than myself to admit the perfect
truth of the principle or the immense importance and great variety of
its applications. Your chapters on Man are of intense interest, but as
touching my special heresy not as yet altogether convincing, though of
course I fully agree with every word and every argument which goes to
prove the "evolution" or "development" of man out of a lower form. My
only difficulties are as to whether you have accounted for _every_ step
of the development by ascertained laws. Feeling sure that th