DARWIN.
P.S.--I am very sorry that you have given up sexual selection. I am not
at all shaken, and stick to my colours like a true Briton. When I think
about the unadorned head of the Argus pheasant, I might exclaim, _Et tu,
Brute!_
* * * * *
_Down, Beckenham. June 25, 1876._
My dear Wallace,--I have been able to read rather more quickly of late
and have finished your book. I have not much to say. Your careful
account of the temperate parts of South America interested me much, and
all the more from knowing something of the country. I like also much the
general remarks towards the end of the volume on the land molluscs. Now
for a few criticisms.
P. 122:[107] I am surprised at your saying that "during the whole Tertiary
period North America was zoologically far more strongly contrasted with
South America than it is now." But we know hardly anything of the latter
except during the Pliocene period, and then the mastodon, horse, several
great Dentata, etc. etc., were common to the North and South. If you are
right I erred greatly in my Journal, where I insisted on the former
close connection between the two.
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