Poulton
(I had promised it to him at the lecture) for the Oxford collection, and
he is greatly pleased with it; and especially with its history--one
quite small bit of an orchid, after more than a year in a greenhouse,
producing a rare or new beetle and an equally rare moth!...
I am glad to say I feel really better than any time the last ten
years.--A.R.W.
* * * * *
The Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge has kindly written his reminiscence of
another very curious coincidence connected with a natural history
object.
"Some years ago, on looking over some insect drawers in my collection,
Mr. A.R. Wallace exclaimed, 'Why, there is my old Sarawak spider!'
'Well! that is curious,' I replied, 'because that spider has caused me
much trouble and thought as to who might have caught it, and where; I
had only lately decided to describe and figure it, even though I could
give the name of neither locality nor finder, being, as it seemed to me,
of a genus and species not as yet recorded; also I had, as you see,
provisionally conferred your name upon it, although I had not the
remotest idea that it had anything else to do with you.' 'Well,' said
Mr. Wallace, 'if it is my old spider it ought to have my own private
ticket on the pin underneath.' 'It has a ticket,' I replied, 'but it is
unintelligible to me; the spider came to me among some other items by
purchase at the sale of Mr.
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