Editing Alfred Russel Wallace (section)

==== Defence of Darwin and his ideas ====

After Wallace returned to England in 1862, he became one of the staunchest defenders of Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species''. In an incident in 1863 that particularly pleased Darwin, Wallace published the short paper "Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species". This rebutted a paper by a professor of geology at the University of Dublin that had sharply criticised Darwin's comments in the ''Origin'' on how hexagonal honey bee cells could have evolved through natural selection.{{sfn|Slotten|2004|pp=197–199}}
An even longer defence was a 1867 article in the ''[[Quarterly Journal of Science]]'' called "Creation by Law". It reviewed [[George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll|George Campbell]], the 8th Duke of Argyll's book, ''The Reign of Law'', which aimed to refute natural selection.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wallace |first=Alfred |title=Creation by Law (S140: 1867) |url=http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S140.htm |publisher=The Alfred Russel Wallace Page hosted by [[Western Kentucky University]] |access-date=23 May 2007 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070602121908/http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S140.htm |archive-date= 2 June 2007 |url-status=live }}</ref>
After an 1870 meeting of the [[British Science Association]], Wallace wrote to Darwin complaining that there were "no opponents left who know anything of natural history, so that there are none of the good discussions we used to have".{{sfn|Slotten|2004|p=261}}