My dear Wallace,--I must ease myself by writing a few words to say how much I and all others in this house admire your article in _Nature_. You are certainly an unparalleled master in lucidly stating a case and in arguing. Nothing ever was better done than your argument about the term "origin of species," and the consequences about much being gained, even if we know nothing about precise cause of each variation. By chance I have given a few words in my first volume, now some time printed off, about mimetic butterflies, and have touched on two of your points, viz. on species already widely dissimilar not being made to resemble each other, and about the variations in Lepidoptera being often well pronounced. How strange it is that Mr. Bennett or anyone else should bring in the action of the mind as a leading cause of variation, seeing the beautiful and complex adaptations and modifications of structure in plants, which I do not suppose they would say had minds. I have finished the first volume, and am half-way through the first proof of the second volume, of my confounded book, which half kills me by fatigue, and which I much fear will quite kill me in your good estimation. If you have leisure I should much like a little news of you and your doings and your family.--Ever yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN. * * * * * _Holly House, Barking, E. November 24, 1870._ Dear Darwin,--Your letter gave me very great pleasure. We still agree, I am sure, on nineteen points out of twenty, and on the twentieth I am not inconvincible. But then I must be convinced by facts and arguments, not by high-handed ridicule such as Claparède's. I hope you see the difference between such criticisms as his, and that in the last number of the _North American Review_, where my last chapter is really criticised, point by point; and though I think some of it very weak, I admit that some is very strong, and almost converts me from the error of my ways. As to your new book, I am sure it will not make me think less highly of you than I do, unless you do, what you have never done yet, ignore facts and arguments that go against you.