LACE.

* * * * *

TO MR. H.N. RIDLEY

_Parkstone, Dorset. October 3, 1898._

My dear Mr. Ridley,-- ... We are much interested now about De Rougemont,
and I dare say you have seen his story in the _Wide World Magazine_,
while in the _Daily Chronicle_ there have been letters, interviews and
discussions without end. A few people, who think they know everything,
treat him as an impostor; but unfortunately they themselves contradict
each other, and so far are proved to be wrong more often than De
Rougemont. I firmly believe that his story is substantially true--making
allowance for his being a foreigner who learnt one system of measures,
then lived thirty years among savages, and afterwards had to reproduce
all his knowledge in English and Australian idioms. As an intelligent
writer in the _Saturday Review_ says, putting aside the sensational
illustrations there is absolutely nothing in his story but what is quite
_possible_ and even _probable_. He must have reached Singapore the year
after I returned home, and I dare say there are people there who
remember Jensen, the owner of the schooner _Veilland_, with whom he
sailed on his disastrous pearl-fishing expedition. Jensen is said now to
be in British New Guinea, and has often spoken of his lost cargo of
pearls. ---- and ----, of the Royal Geographical Society, state that
they are convinced of the substantial truth of the main outlines of his
story, and after three interviews and innumerable questions are
satisfied of his _bona fides_--and so am I.--With best wishes, believe
me to be yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

MR. SAMUEL WADDINGTON TO A.R. WALLACE

_7 Whitehall Gardens, London, S.W. February 19, 1901._

Dear Sir,--I trust you will forgive a stranger troubling you with a
letter, but a friend has asked me whether, as a matter of fact, Darwin
held that _all_ living creatures descended from one and the same
ancestor, and that the pedigree of a humming-bird and that of a
hippopotamus would meet if traced far enough back. Can you tell me
whether Darwin did teach this?

I should have thought that as life was developed once, it probably could
and would be developed many times in different places, as month after
month, and year after year went by; and that, from the very first, it
probably took many different forms and characters, in the same way as
crystals take different forms and