ow
what you are disposed to think. My first notice of it will I think
appear in _Nature_ next week, but I have been hurried for it, and it is
not so well written an article as I could wish.

I sincerely hope your health is improving.--Believe me yours very
faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

P.S.--I fear Lubbock's motion is being pushed off to the end of the
Session, and Hooker's case will not be fairly considered. I hope the
matter will _not_ be allowed to drop.--A.R.W.

* * * * *

_Down, Beckenham, Kent. August 28, 1872._

My dear Wallace,--I have at last finished the gigantic job of reading
Dr. Bastian's book, and have been deeply interested in it. You wished to
hear my impression, but it is not worth sending.

He seems to me an extremely able man, as indeed I thought when I read
his first essay. His general argument in favour of archebiosis[92] is
wonderfully strong; though I cannot think much of some few of his
arguments. The result is that I am bewildered and astonished by his
statements, but am not convinced; though on the whole it seems to me
probable that archebiosis is true. I am not convinced partly I think
owing to the deductive cast of much of his reasoning; and I know not
why, but I never feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of H.
Spencer's writings. If Dr. B.'s book had been turned upside down, and he
had begun with the various cases of heterogenesis, and then gone on to
organic and afterwards to saline solutions, and had then given his
general arguments, I should have been, I believe, much more influenced.
I suspect, however, that my chief difficulty is the effect of old
convictions being stereotyped on my brain. I must have more evidence
that germs or the minutest fragments of the lowest forms are always
killed by 212 deg. of Fahr. Perhaps the mere reiteration of the statements
given by Dr. B. by other men whose judgment I respect and who have
worked long on the lower organisms would suffice to convince me. Here is
a fine confession of intellectual weakness; but what an inexplicable
frame of mind is that of belief.

As for Rotifers and Tardigrades being spontaneously generated, my mind
can no more digest such statements, whether true or false, than my
stomach can digest a lump of lead.

Dr. B. is always comparing archebiosis as well as growth to
crystallisation; but on this view a Rotifer or Tardigrade is adapted to
its humble conditions of life by a happ