Notwithstanding all his sneers, I do not strike my colours as yet about pangenesis. I should like to live to see archebiosis proved true, for it would be a discovery of transcendent importance; or if false I should like to see it disproved, and the facts otherwise explained; but I shall not live to see all this. If ever proved, Dr. B. will have taken a prominent part in the work. How grand is the onward rush of science; it is enough to console us for the many errors which we have committed and for our efforts being overlaid and forgotten in the mass of new facts and new views which are daily turning up. This is all I have to say about Dr. B.'s book, and it certainly has not been worth saying. Nevertheless, reward me whenever you can by giving me any news about your appointment to the Bethnal Green Museum.--My dear Wallace, yours very sincerely, CH. DARWIN. * * * * * _The Dell, Grays, Essex. August 31, 1872._ Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for your long and interesting letter about Bastian's book, though I almost regret that my asking you for your opinion should have led you to give yourself so much trouble. I quite understand your frame of mind, and think it quite a natural and proper one. You had hard work to hammer your views into people's heads at first, and if Bastian's theory is true he will have still harder work, because the facts he appeals to are themselves so difficult to establish. Are not you mistaken about the Sphagnum? As I remember it, Huxley detected a fragment of Sphagnum leaf _in the same solution in which a fungoid growth had been developed_. Bastian mistook the Sphagnum also for a vegetable growth, and on account of this ignorance of the character of Sphagnum, and its presence in the solution, Huxley rejected somewhat contemptuously (and I think very illogically) all Bastian's observations. Again, as to the saline solution without nitrogen, would not the air supply what was required? I quite agree that the book would have gained force by rearrangement in the way you suggest, but perhaps he thought it necessary to begin with a general argument in order to induce people to examine his new collection of facts, I am impressed _most_ by the agreement of so many observers, some of whom struggle to explain away their own facts. What a wonderfully ingenious and suggestive paper that is by Galton on "Blood Relationship." It helps to render intelligible many of the eccentricities of heredity, atavism, etc.