My dear Darwin

Many thanks for your kind letter.¹ I was afraid to write because I heard such sad accounts of your health but I am glad to find that you can write & I presume read, by deputy. My little article on Haughton’s paper was published in the “Annals of Nat. Hist.” about Aug. or Sept. last I think,² but I have not a copy to refer to. I am sure it does not deserve Asa Grays praises for though the matter may be true enough, the manner I know is very inferior.³ It was written hastily & when I read it in the “Annals” I was rather ashamed of it as I knew so many could have done it so much better.

I will try & see Agassiz’ paper & book.⁴ What I have hitherto seen of his on glacial subjects seemed very good,⁵ but in all his Nat. Hist. theories, he seems so utterly wrong & so totally blind to the plainest deductions from facts, & at the same time so vague & obscure in his language, that it would be a very long & wearisome task to answer him.⁶

With regard to work I am doing but little— I am afraid I have no good habit of systematic work. I have been gradually getting parts of my collections in order, but the obscurities of synonomy & descriptions, the difficulty of examining specimens & my very limited library, make it wearisome work.⁷ I have been lately getting the first groups of my butterflies in order, & they offer some most interesting facts in variation & distribution,—in variation some very puzzling ones—⁸ Though I have very fine series of specimens I find in many cases I want more, in fact if I could have afforded to have had all my collections kept till my return I should I think have found it necessary to retain twice as many as I now have.⁹

I am at last making a beginning of a small book on my Eastern journey, which if I can persevere I hope to have ready by next ’Xmas.¹⁰ I am a very bad hand at writing anything like narrative, I want something to argue on & then I find it much easier to go a’head. I rather despair therefore of making so good a book as Bates’,¹¹ though I think my subject is better. Like every other traveller I suppose, I feel dreadfully the want of copious notes on common every day objects, sights & sounds & incidents, which I imagined I could never forget but which I now find it impossible to recall with any accuracy.

I have just had a long & most interesting letter from my old companion Spruce.¹² He says he has had a letter from you about Melastomas, but has not he says for 3 years seen a single Melastomaceous plant!¹³ They are totally absent from the Pacific plains of trop. America though so abundant on the Eastern plains. Poor fellow! he seems to be in a worse state than you are. Life has been a burden to him for three years owing to lung & heart disease, & rheumatism, brought on by exposure in in high hot & cold damp valleys of the Andes: He went down to the dry climate of the Pacific coast to die more at ease, but the change improved him, & he thinks to come home,¹⁴ though he is sure he will not survive the first winter in England. He had never been able to get a copy of your book,¹⁵ though I am sure no one would have enjoyed or appreciated it more.

If you are able to bear reading will you allow me to take the liberty of recommending you a book? The fact is I have been so astonished & delighted with the perusal of Spencer’s¹⁶ works that I think it a duty to Society to recommend them to all my friends who I think can appreciate them. The one I particularly refer to now is Social Statics,¹⁷ a book which is by no means hard to read; it is even amusing, & owing to the wonderful clearness of its style may be read & understood by any one. I think therefore as it is quite distinct from your special studies at present, you might consider it as “light literature” and I am pretty sure it would interest you more that a great deal of what is now considered very good. I am utterly astonished that so few people seem to read Spencer, & the utter ignorance there seems to be among politicians & political economists of the grand views & logical stability of his works. He appears to me as far ahead of John Stuart Mill as J. S. M. is of the rest of the world, and I may add as Darwin is of Agassiz.¹⁸ The range of his knowledge is no less than its accuracy. His “Nebular Hypothesis” in the last vol. of his essays¹⁹ is the most masterly astronomical paper I have ever read, and in his forthcoming volume on Biology ²⁰ he is I understand going to shew that there is something else besides “Nat. Selection” at work in nature.²¹ So you must look out for a “foeman worthy of your steel”!²² But perhaps all this time you have read his books—²³ If so excuse me, & pray give me your opinion of him as I have hitherto only met with one man (Huxley) who has read & appreciated him.²⁴

Allow me to say in conclusion how much I regret that unavoidable circumstances have caused me to see so little of you since my return home, & how earnestly I pray for the speedy restoration of your health.

Yours most sincerely | Alfred R. Wallace

C. Darwin Esq.