It is a book to read and think over, and read again.
It is a masterpiece....--Yours very truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO PROF. POULTON
_Broadstone, Wimborne. July 27, 1907._
My dear Poulton,--Thanks for your very interesting letter. I am glad to
hear you have a new book on "Evolution"[33] nearly ready and that in it
you will do something to expose the fallacies of the Mutationists and
Mendelians, who pose before the world as having got _all_ wisdom, before
which we poor Darwinians must hide our diminished heads!
Wishing to know the best that could be said for these latter-day
anti-Darwinians, I have just been reading Lock's book on "Variation,
Heredity, and Evolution." In the early part of his book he gives a
tolerably fair account of Natural Selection, etc. But he gradually turns
to Mendelism as the "one thing needful"--stating that there can be "no
sort of doubt" that Mendel's paper is the "most important" contribution
of its size ever made to biological science!
"Mutation," as a theory, is absolutely nothing new--only the assertion
that new species originate _always_ in sports, for which the evidence
adduced is the most meagre and inconclusive of any ever set forth with
such pretentious claims! I hope you will thoroughly expose this absurd
claim.
Mendelism is something new, and within its very limited range,
important, as leading to conceptions as to the causes and laws of
heredity, but only misleading when adduced as the true origin of species
in nature, as to which it seems to me to have no part.
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