Dear Darwin

I do not know your son’s (Mr G. Darwin’s) address at Cambridge. Will you be so good as to forward him the enclosed note begging for a little information.¹

I was delighted to see the notice in the “Academy” that you are really going to bring out your book on Man.² I anticipate for it an enormous sale, and shall read it with intense interest, although I expect to find in it more to differ from than in any of your other books.

Your reasonable & reasoning opponents are now taking the field. I have been writing a little notice of Murphy’s book “Habit & Intelligence”,—which with much that is strange & unintelligible contains some very acute criticisms and the statement of a few real difficulties.³

Another article just sent me from “the Month”—contains some good criticism    How incipient organs can be useful is a real difficulty, so is the independent origin of similar complex organs;—but most of his other points though well put are not very formidable.⁴

I am trying to begin a little book on the “Distribution of Animals”, but I fear I shall not make much of it from my idleness in collecting facts.⁵ I shall make it a popular sketch first, and if it succeeds gather materials for enlarging it at a future time.

If any suggestion occurs to you as to the kind of maps that would be best, or on any other essential point, I sh^d. be glad of a hint.

I hope your residence in Wales did you good. I had no idea you were so near Dolgelly till I met your son there one evening when I was going to leave the next morning.⁶ It is a glorious country but the time I like is May and June—the foliage is so glorious.

Sincerely hoping you are pretty well & with kind regards to Mrs. Darwin & the rest of your family | Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace—

C. Darwin Esq.