LETTER 123. TO H.W. BATES.
Down, April 4th [1861].

I have been unwell, so have delayed thanking you for your admirable letter.
I hope you will not think me presumptuous in saying how much I have been
struck with your varied knowledge, and with the decisive manner in which
you bring it to bear on each point,--a rare and most high quality, as far
as my experience goes. I earnestly hope you will find time to publish
largely: before the Linnean Society you might bring boldly out your views
on species. Have you ever thought of publishing your travels, and working
in them the less abstruse parts of your Natural History? I believe it
would sell, and be a very valuable contribution to Natural History. You
must also have seen a good deal of the natives. I know well it would be
quite unreasonable to ask for any further information from you; but I will
just mention that I am now, and shall be for a long time, writing on
domestic varieties of all animals. Any facts would be useful, especially
any showing that savages take any care in breeding their animals, or in
rejecting the bad and preserving the good; or any fancies which they may
have that one coloured or marked dog, etc., is better than another. I have
already collected much on this head, but am greedy for facts. You will at
once see their bearing on variation under domestication.

Hardly anything in your letter has pleased me more than about sexual
selection. In my larger MS. (and indeed in the "Origin" with respect to
the tuft of hairs on the breast of the cock-turkey) I have guarded myself
against going too far; but I did not at all know that male and female
butterflies haunted rather different sites. If I had to cut up myself in a
review I would have [worried?] and quizzed sexual selection; therefore,
though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how