At last it is so, and I am offering
it for sale, and as soon as it is disposed of I intend to try the
neighbourhood of Dorking, whence there are late trains from Cannon
Street and Charing Cross.

I see your post-mark was Dorking, so I suppose you have been staying
there. Is it not a lovely country? I hope your health is improved, and
when, quite at your leisure, you have waded through my book, I trust
you will again let me have a few lines of friendly criticism and
advice.--Yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

_Down, Beckenham. June 17, 1876._

My dear Wallace,--I have now finished the whole of Vol. I., with the
same interest and admiration as before; and I am convinced that my
judgment was right and that it is a memorable book, the basis of all
future work on the subject. I have nothing particular to say, but
perhaps you would like to hear my impressions on two or three points.
Nothing has struck me more than the admirable and convincing manner in
which you treat Java. To allude to a very trifling point, it is capital
about the unadorned head of the Argus pheasant.[102] How plain a thing is,
when it is once pointed out! What a wonderful case is that of Celebes! I
am glad that you have slightly modified your views with respect to
Africa,[103] and this leads me to say that I cannot swallow the so-called
continent of Lemuria, i.e. the direct connection of Africa and
Ceylon![104] The facts do not seem to me many and strong enough to justify
so immense a change of level. Moreover, Mauritius and the other islands
appear to me oceanic in character. But do not suppose that I place my
judgment on this subject on a level with yours. A wonderfully good paper
was published about a year ago on India in the _Geological Journal_--I
_think_ by Blandford.[105] Ramsay agreed with me that it was one of the
best published for a long time. The author shows that India has been a
continent with enormous fresh-water lakes from the Permian period to the
present day. If I remember right he believes in a former connection with
South Africa.

I am sure that I read, some 20 to 30 years ago, in a French journal, an
account of teeth of mastodon found in Timor; but the statement may have
been an error.

With respect to what you say about the colonising of New Zealand, I
somewhere have an account of a frog frozen in the ice of a Swiss
glacier, and which revived when thawed. I may add that there