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Show moreWallace writes to Allen on the subject of color perception of animals, including man. Significance of colored flowers and fruits interested Wallace especially. He also discusses Gladstone's paper on Homer's color terms in the letter. Transcription: "Rosehill,[Dorking]? Oct 7th. 1877 My dear Sir I have read the passages you marked, as well as a good many other parts of your book with much pleasure. I was particularly pleased with your suggestion (which had not occurred to me) that fruits, in our sense of the word, are more recent tdevelopments than flowers because they attract chiefly mammals + birds instead of insects. There is I admit a partial contradiction between the view that red excites animals on account of its glaring contrast, + that yet the perception of it by man is recent. The latter view [] I believe be incorrect, + should be stated I think more hypothetically that I have put it. I have just been reading Mr. Gladstone's interesting paper which is almost wholly on flowers' colour terms or rather the absence of them. The evidence is most curious, but I think it only goes to show that language was imperfect, and that colour was too infinitely [] + of too little importance to early man, to have received a systematic nomenclature. Flowers + birds + insects were despised, + the colours of more important objects as the sea [] earth, iron, brass etc. were not only not pure colours (generally) but subject to endless fluctuations. Your remarks on nuts are very good. I quite overlooked that case + shall refer to you when I [] my papers with there is a volume shortly. I think all the coloured fruits which are poisonous to man are eatable to some birds etc. They are far too numerous to be accounted for otherwise. With many thanks Believe me yours faithfully Alfred R. Wallace Grant Allen Esq." Letter, signed by sender. Written from Rosehill, Dorking.
The Robert M. Stecher Collection of Charles Darwin Books and Manuscripts
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