ALTHOUGH Alfred Russel Wallace published a detailed autobiography, a welcome must be given to this book of letters and reminiscences, which contains fresh and interesting information regarding one of whom we wish to kno,w all that is significant. Mr. Marchant, whose work has been a labour of love and veneration, tells us that the original idea was to make a comparative study entitled “Darwin and Wallace,” which was also to include an estimate of the present-day position of the theory of natural selection. In this rather difficult task the veteran naturalist, whose courage never wavered, proposed to co-operate, but he died soon after the agreement with the publishers had o been signed. Thus the originally projected book remains unwritten, and what Mr. Marchant has done is rather less ambitious. He has made a selection from several thousands of letters, and has bound these together with a sympathetic and well-written biographical commentary. We wish, indeed, that there had been more commentary and fewer letters, for some of these seem to us quite trivial, and others lose in effect because their sig nificance is,not adequately indicated. We recog nise the value of having “the complete extant correspondence between Wallace and Darwin” (1857–1881), though many of the fascinating documents have been published before; but we cannot repress our judgment that the book would have been twice as valuable if half of it had been left out. It is the old story of the over crowded picture gallery.