Dear Miss Buckley,--Thanks for your note. I am hard at work criticising Darwin. I admire his Moral Sense chapter as much as anything in the book. It is both original and the most satisfactory of all the theories, if not quite satisfactory....--Believe me yours very faithfully, ALFRED R. WALLACE. P.S.--Darwin's book on the whole is wonderful! There are plenty of points open to criticism, but it is a marvellous contribution to the history of the development of the forms of life. * * * * * SIR C. LYELL TO A.R. WALLACE _February 15, 1876._ Dear Wallace,--I have read the Preface,[13] and like and approve of it much. I do not believe there is a word which Darwin would wish altered. It is high time this modest assertion of your claims as an independent originator of Natural Selection should be published.--Ever most truly, CHA. LYELL. * * * * * SIR J. HOOKER TO A.R. WALLACE _Royal Gardens, Kew. August 2, 1880._ My dear Wallace,--I think you have made an immense advance to our knowledge of the ways and means of distribution, and bridged many great gaps.[14] Your reasoning seems to me to be sound throughout, though I am not prepared to receive it in all its details. I am disposed to regard the Western Australian flora as the latest in point of origin, and I hope to prove it by development, and by the absence of various types. If Western Australia ever had an old flora, I am inclined to suppose that it has been destroyed by the invasion of Eastern types after the union with East Australia. My idea is that these types worked round by the south, and altered rapidly as they proceeded westward, increasing in species. Nor can I conceive the Western Island, when surrounded by sea, harbouring a flora like its present one. I have been disposed to regard New Caledonia and the New Hebrides as the parent country of many New Zealand and Australian forms of vegetation, but we do not know enough of the vegetation of the former to warrant the conclusion; and after all it would be but a slight modification of your views. I very much like your whole working of the problem of the isolation and connection of New Zealand and Australia _inter se_ and with the countries north of them, and the whole treatment of that respecting north and south migration over the globe is admirable....--Ever most truly yours, J.D. HOOKER. * * * * * SIR J. HOOKER TO A.R. WALLACE _Royal Gardens, Kew. November 10, 1880._