Darwin's ineradicable acceptance of the theory of heredity of the
effects of climate, use and disuse, food, etc., on the individual led to
much obscurity and fallacy in his arguments, here and there.--Yours very
sincerely,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO PROF. POULTON _Parkstone, Dorset. February 14, 1897._
My dear Poulton,--Thanks for copy of your British Association
Address,[28] which I did not read in _Nature_, being very busy just
then. I have now read it with much pleasure, and think it a very useful
and excellent discussion that was much needed. There is, however, one
important error, I think, which vitiates a vital part of the argument,
and which renders it possible so to reduce the time indicated by geology
as to render the accordance of Geology and Physics more easy to effect.
The error I allude to was made by Sir A. Geikie in his Presidential
Address[29] which you quote. Immediately it appeared I wrote to him
pointing it out, but he merely acknowledged my letter, saying he would
consider it. To me it seems a most palpable and extraordinary blunder.
The error consists in taking the rate of deposition as the same as the
rate of denudation, whereas it is about twenty times as great, perhaps
much more--because the area of deposition is at least twenty times less
than that of denudation. In order to equal the area of denudation, it
would require that _every_ bed of _every_ formation should have once
extended over the _whole area_ of all the land of the globe! The
deposition in narrow belts along coasts of all the matter brought down
by rivers, as proved by the _Challenger_, leads to the same result.
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