Download or read book Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences written by James Marchant and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I have long recognised how much clearer and deeper your insight into matters is than mine.""I sometimes marvel how truth progresses, so difficult is it for one man to convince another, unless his mind is vacant.""I grieve to differ from you, and it actually terrifies me, and makes me constantly distrust myself. I fear we shall never quite understand each other."-DARWIN TO WALLACE.During the period covered by the reception, exposition, and gradual acceptance of the theory of Natural Selection, both Wallace and Darwin were much occupied with closely allied scientific work.The publication in 1859 of the "Origin of Species"1 marked a distinct period in the course of Darwin's scientific labours; his previous publications had, in a measure, prepared the way for this, and those which immediately followed were branches growing out from the main line of thought and argument contained in the "Origin," an overflow of the "mass of facts" patiently gathered during the preceding years. With Wallace, the end of the first period of his literary work was completed by the publication of his two large volumes on "The Geographical Distribution of Animals," towards which all his previous thought and writings had tended, and from which, again, came other valuable works leading up to the publication of "Darwinism" (1889).