TER 442. TO A.R. WALLACE.

(442/1. Dr. Clifford Allbutt's view probably had reference to the fact
that the sperm-cell goes, or is carried, to the germ-cell, never vice
versa. In this letter Darwin gives the reason for the "law" referred
to. Mr. A.R. Wallace has been good enough to give us the following
note:--"It was at this time that my paper on 'Protective Resemblance'
first appeared in the 'Westminster Review,' in which I adduced the
greater, or rather, the more continuous, importance of the female
(in the lower animals) for the race, and my 'Theory of Birds' Nests'
('Journal of Travel and Natural History,' No. 2) in which I applied this
to the usually dull colours of female butterflies and birds. It is
to these articles as well as to my letters that Darwin chiefly
refers."--Note by Mr. Wallace, May 27th, 1902.)

Down, April 30th [1868].

Your letter, like so many previous ones, has interested me much. Dr.
Allbutt's view occurred to me some time ago, and I have written a short
discussion on it. It is, I think, a remarkable law, to which I have
found no exception. The foundation lies in the fact that in many cases
the eggs or seeds require nourishment and protection by the mother-form
for some time after impregnation. Hence the spermatozoa and antherozoids
travel in the lower aquatic animals and plants to the female, and pollen
is borne to the female organ. As organisms rise in the scale it seems
natural that the male should carry the spermatozoa to the female in his
own body. As the male is the searcher, he has required and gained more
eager passions than the female; and, very differently from you, I look
at this as one great difficulty in believing that the males select the
more attractive females; as far as I can discover, they are always ready
to seize on any female, and sometimes on many females. Nothing would
please me more than to find evidence of males selecting the more
attractive females. I have for months been trying to persuade myself of
this. There is the case of man in favour of this belief, and I know in
hybrid unions of males preferring particular females, but, alas, not
guided by colour. Perhaps I may get more evidence as I wade through my
twenty years' mass of notes.

I am not shaken about the female protected butterflies. I will grant
(only for argument) that the life of the male is of very little
value,--I will grant that the males do not vary, yet why has not the
protective beauty of the femal