P.S.--A poor man came here last night (Saturday) with a basket of primrose roots--had carried them eight miles, couldn't sell one in Poole or Parkstone--was 64 years old--couldn't get any work to do--had no home, etc. So, though I do not approve of digging up primrose roots as a trade, I gave him 1s. 6d. for them, pitying him as one of the countless victims of landlordism.--A.R.W. A poor man was sentenced to fourteen days' hard labour last week for picking snowdrops in Charborough Park. Shame!--A.R.W., Pres. L.N. Society. * * * * * TO Miss VIOLET WALLACE _Parkstone, Dorset. May 5, 1892._ My dear Violet,--I have finished reading "Freeland." It is very good--as good a story as "Looking Backward," but not quite so pleasantly written--rather heavy and Germanic in places. The results are much the same as in "Looking Backward" but brought about in a different and very ingenious manner. It may be called "Individualistic Socialism." I shall be up in London soon, I expect, to the first Meetings of the Examiners in the great science of "omnium gatherum."[44]--Your affec. papa, ALFRED R. WALLACE. * * * * * While he lived at Parkstone our father built a small orchid house in which he cultivated a number of orchids for a few years, but the constant attention which they demanded, together with the heated atmosphere, were too much for him, and he was obliged to give them up. He was never tired of admiring their varied forms and colours, or explaining to friends the wonderful apparatus by which many of them were fertilised. The following letter shows his enthusiasm for orchids: TO Miss VIOLET WALLACE _Parkstone, Dorset. November_ 25, 1894. My dear Violet,-- ... I have found a doctor at Poole (Mr. Turner) who has two nice orchid houses which he attends to entirely himself, and as I can thus get advice and sympathy from a fellow maniac (though he _is_ a public vaccinator!) my love of orchids is again aroused to fever-heat, and I have made some alterations in the greenhouse which will better adapt it for orchid growing, and have bought a few handsome kinds very cheap, and these give me a lot of extra work and amusement.... * * * * * TO HIS WIFE _Hotel du Glacier du Rhone. Wednesday evening, [July, 1895]._