book, either as a monograph, or a
classification, putting everything wrong (for me).

Hoping you are in good health and able to go on with your favourite
work, I remain yours very sincerely,

ALFRED B. WALLACE.

* * * * *

_The Dell, Grays, Essex. July 21, 1875._

Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your kindness in sending me a copy of your
new book.[99] Being very busy I have only had time to dip into it yet.
The account of Utricularia is most marvellous, and quite new to me. I'm
rather surprised that you do not make any remarks on the origin of these
extraordinary contrivances for capturing insects. Did you think they
were too obvious? I daresay there is no difficulty, but I feel sure they
will be seized on as inexplicable by Natural Selection, and your silence
on the point will be held to show that you consider them so! The
contrivance in Utricularia and Dionaea, and in fact in Drosera too, seems
fully as great and complex as in Orchids, but there is not the same
motive force. Fertilisation and cross-fertilisation are important ends
enough to lead to _any_ modification, but can we suppose mere
nourishment to be so important, seeing that it is so easily and almost
universally obtained by extrusion of roots and leaves? Here are plants
which lose their roots and leaves to acquire the same results by
infinitely complex modes! What a wonderful and long-continued series of
variations must have led up to the perfect "trap" in Utricularia, while
at any stage of the process the same end might have been gained by a
little more development of roots and leaves, as in 9,999 plants out of
10,000!

Is this an imaginary difficulty, or do you mean to deal with it in
future editions of the "Origin"?--Believe me yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

_The Dell, Grays, Essex. November 7, 1875._

Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your beautiful little volume on "Climbing
Plants," which forms a most interesting companion to your "Orchids" and
"Insectivorous Plants." I am sorry to see that you have not this time
given us the luxury of cut edges.

I am in the midst of printing and proof-sheets, which are wearisome in
the extreme from the mass of names and statistics I have been obliged to
introduce, and which will, I fear, make my book insufferably dull to all
but zoological specialists.

My trust is in my pictures and maps to catch the public.

Hoping you