ave
collected a few notes on man, but I do not suppose I shall ever use
them. Do you intend to follow out your views? and if so, would you like
at some future time to have my few references and notes? I am sure I
hardly know whether they are of any value, and they are at present in a
state of chaos.

There is much more that I should like to write, but I have not strength.

P.S. Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese
or Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women;
but oh, what a scheme is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!
I fear my letter will be barely intelligible to you.

LETTER 406* A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN. 5, Westbourne Grove Terrace,
W., May 29th [1864].

You are always so ready to appreciate what others do, and especially to
overestimate my desultory efforts, that I cannot be surprised at your
very kind and flattering remarks on my papers. I am glad, however, that
you have made a few critical observations (and am only sorry that you
were not well enough to make more), as that enables me to say a few
words in explanation.

My great fault is haste. An idea strikes me, I think over it for a few
days, and then write away with such illustrations as occur to me while
going on. I therefore look at the subject almost solely from one
point of view. Thus, in my paper on Man (406*/1. Published in the
"Anthropological Review," 1864.), I aim solely at showing that brutes
are modified in a great variety of ways by Natural Selection, but that
in none of these particular ways can Man be modified, because of the
superiority of his intellect. I therefore no doubt overlook a few
smaller points in which Natural Selection may still act on men and
brutes alike. Colour is one of them, and I have alluded to this in
correlation to constitution, in an abstract I have made at Sclater's
request for the "Natural History Review." (406*/2. "Nat. Hist. Review,"
1864, page 328.) At the same time, there is so much evidence of
migrations and displacements of races of man, and so many cases of
peoples of distinct physical characters inhabiting the same or similar
regions, and also of races of uniform physical characters inhabiting
widely dissimilar regions,--that the external characteristics of the
chief races of man must, I think, be older than his present geographical
distribution, and the modifications produced by correlation to
favourable variations of constitution b