neously, that having so become "plastic," any
amount or a larger amount of sudden variation in some direction is
likely.

Mivart's greatest error, the confounding "individual variations" with
"minute or imperceptible variations," is well exposed by C. Wright, and
that part I should like to see reprinted; but I always thought you laid
too much stress on the slowness of the action of Natural Selection owing
to the smallness and rarity of favourable variations. In your chapter on
Natural Selection the expressions, "extremely slight modifications,"
"every variation even the slightest," "every grade of constitutional
difference," occur, and these have led to errors such as Mivart's, I say
all this because I feel sure that Mivart would be the last to
intentionally misrepresent you, and he has told me that he was sorry the
word "infinitesimal," as applied to variations used by Natural
Selection, got into his book, and that he would alter it, as no doubt he
has done, in his second edition.

Some of Mivart's strongest points--the eye and ear, for instance--are
unnoticed in the review. You will, of course, reply to these. His
statement of the "missing link" argument is also forcible, and has, I
have no doubt, much weight with the public. As to all his minor
arguments, I feel with you that they leave Natural Selection stronger
than ever, while the two or three main arguments do leave a lingering
doubt in my mind of some fundamental organic law of development of which
we have as yet no notion.

Pray do not attach any weight to my opinions as to the review. It is
very clever, but the writer seems a little like those critics who know
an author's or an artist's meaning better than they do themselves.

My house is now in the hands of a contractor, but I am wall-building,
etc., and very busy.--With best wishes, believe me, dear Darwin, yours
very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

_Down, Beckenham, Kent. July 12, 1871._

My dear Wallace,--Very many thanks. As soon as I read your letter I
determined, not to print the paper, notwithstanding my eldest daughter,
who is a very good critic, thought it so interesting as to be worth
reprinting. Then my wife came in, and said, "I do not much care about
these things and shall therefore be a good judge whether it is very
dull." So I will leave my decision open for a day or two. Your letter
has been, and will be, of use to me in other ways: thus I h