I
have had grand success this morning in tracing gradational steps by
which the peacock tail has been developed: I quite feel as if I had seen
a long line of its progenitors.
I do not feel that I shall grapple with the sterility argument till my
return home; I have tried once or twice and it has made my stomach feel
as if it had been placed in a vice. Your paper has driven three of my
children half-mad--one sat up to twelve o'clock over it. My second son,
the mathematician, thinks that you have omitted one almost inevitable
deduction which apparently would modify the result. He has written out
what he thinks, but I have not tried fully to understand him. I suppose
that you do not care enough about the subject to like to see what he has
written?
I hope your book progresses.
I am intensely anxious to see your paper in _Murray's Journal_.--My dear
Wallace, yours very sincerely,
CH. DARWIN.
* * * * *
_Hurstpierpoint. March 19, 1868._
Dear Darwin,--I should very much value a _large_ photograph of you, and
also a carte for my album, though it is too bad to ask you for both, as
you must have so many applicants.
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