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Nothing thwarted young Darwin's intense joy and interest in collecting minerals and insects, and in watching and making notes upon the habits of birds. In addition to this wholesome outdoor hobby, the tedium of school lessons was relieved for him by reading Shakespeare, Byron and Scott--also a copy of "Wonders of the World" which belonged to one of the boys, and to which he always attributed his first desire to travel in remote countries, little thinking how his dreams would be fulfilled.

Whilst Charles Darwin occupied himself with outdoor sport and collecting, with a very moderate amount of reading thrown in at intervals, Wallace, on the contrary, devoured all the books he could get; and fortunately for him, his father having been appointed Librarian to the Hertford Town Library, Alfred had access to all the books that appealed to his mental appetite; and these, especially the historical novels, supplemented the lack of interesting history lessons at school, besides giving him an insight into many kinds of literature suited to his varied tastes and temperament. In addition, however, to the hours spent in reading, he and his brother John found endless delight in turning the loft of an outhouse adjoining their yard into a sort of mechanical factory. Here they contrived, by saving up all their pence , to make crackers and other simple fireworks, and to turn old keys into toy cannon, besides making a large variety of articles for practical domestic purposes. Thus he cultivated the gift of resourcefulness and self-reliance on which he had so often to depend when far removed from all civilisation during his travels on the Amazon and in the Malay Archipelago.

A somewhat amusing instance of this is found in a letter to his sister, dated June 25th, 1855, at a time when he wanted a really capable man for his companion, in place of the good-natured but incapable boy Charles, whom he had brought with him from London to teach collecting. In reply to some remarks by his sister about a young man who she thought would be suitable, he wrote: "Do not tell me merely that he is 'a very nice young man.' Of course he is.... I should like to know whether he can live on rice and salt fish for a week on occasion.... Can he sleep on a board?... Can he walk twenty miles a day? Whether he can work, for there is sometimes as hard work in collecting as in anything. Can he saw a piece of wood straight? Ask him to make you anything--a little card box, a wooden peg or bottle-stopper, and see if he makes them neat and square."

In another letter he describes the garden and live stock he had been able to obtain where he was living; and in yet another he gives a long list of his domestic woes and tribulations--which, however, were overcome with the patience inculcated in early life by his hobbies, and also by the fact that the family was always more or less in straitened circumstances, so that the children were taught to make themselves useful in various ways in order to assist their mother in the home.

As he grew from childhood into youth, Alfred Wallace's extreme sensitiveness developed to an almost painful degree. He grew rapidly, and his unusual height made him still more shy when forced to occupy any prominent position amongst boys of his own age. During the latter part of his time at Hertford Grammar School his father was unable to pay the usual fees, and it was agreed that Alfred should act as pupil teacher in return for the lessons received. This arrangement, while acceptable on the one hand, caused him actual mental and physical pain on the other, as it increased his consciousness of the disabilities under which he laboured in contrast with most of the other boys of his own age.

At the age of 14 Wallace was taken away from school, and until something could be definitely decided about his future--as up to the present he had no particular bent in any one direction--he was sent to London to live with his brother John, who was then working for a master builder in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road. This was in January, 1837, and it was during the following summer that he joined his other brother, William, at Barton-on-the-Clay, Bedfordshire, and began land surveying. In the meantime, while in London, he had been brought very closely into contact with the economics and ethics of Robert Owen, the well-known Socialist; and although very young in years he was so deeply impressed with the reasonableness and practical outcome of these theories that, though considerably modified as time went on, they formed the foundation for his own writings on Socialism and allied subjects in after years.

As one of our aims in this section is to suggest an outline of the contrasting influences governing the early lives of Wallace and Darwin, it is interesting to note that at the ages of 14 and 16 respectively, and immediately on leaving school, they came under the first definite mental influence which was to shape their future thought and action. Yet how totally different from Wallace's trials as a pupil teacher was the removal of Darwin from Dr. Butler's school at Shrewsbury because "he was doing no good" there, and his father thought it was "time he settled down to his medical study in Edinburgh," never heeding the fact that his son had already one passion in life, apart from "shooting, dogs, and rat-catching," which stood a very good chance of saving him from becoming the disgrace to the family that his good father feared. So that while Wallace was imbibing his first lessons in Socialism at 14 years of age, Darwin at 16 found himself merely enduring, with a feeling of disgust, Dr. Duncan's lectures, which were "something fearful to remember," on materia medica at eight o'clock on a winter's morning, and, worse still, Dr. Munro's lectures on human anatomy, which were "as dull as he was himself." Yet he always deeply regretted not having been urged to practise dissection, because of the invaluable aid it would have been to him as a naturalist.

During his second year in Edinburgh he attended Jameson's lectures on geology and zoology, but found them so "incredibly dull" that he determined never to study the science.

Then came the final move which, all unknowingly, was to lead Darwin into the pursuit of a science which up to that time had only been a hobby and not in any sense the serious profession of his life. But again how wide the difference between his change from Edinburgh to Cambridge, and that of Wallace from a month's association with a working-class Socialistic community in London to land surveying under the simplest rural conditions prevalent amongst the respectable labouring farmers of Bedfordshire--Darwin to the culture and privileges of a great University with the object of becoming a clergyman, and Wallace taking the first road that offered towards earning a living, with no thought as to the ultimate outcome of this life in the open and the systematic observation of soils and land formation.

But the inherent tendencies of Darwin's nature drew him away from theology to the study of geology, entomology and botany. The ensuing four years at Cambridge were very happy ones. While fortunate in being able to follow his various mental and scientific pursuits with the freedom which a good social and financial position secured for him, he found himself by a natural seriousness of manner, balanced by a cheerful temperament and love of sport, the friend and companion of men many years his seniors and holding positions of authority in the world of science. Amongst these the name of Professor Henslow will always take precedence. "This friendship," says Darwin, "influenced my whole career more than any other." Henslow's extensive knowledge of botany, geology, entomology, chemistry and mineralogy, added to his sincere and attractive personality, well-balanced mind and excellent judgment, formed a strong and effective bias in the direction Darwin was destined to follow.

Apart, however, from the strong personal influence of Henslow, Sedgwick and others with whom he came much in contact, two books which he read at this time aroused his "burning zeal to add the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science"; these were Sir J. Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy," and Humboldt's "Personal Narrative." Indeed, so fascinated was he by the description given of Teneriffe in the latter that he at once set about a plan whereby he might spend a holiday, with Henslow, in that locality, a holiday which was, indeed, to form part of his famous voyage.

During the summer vacation of 1831, at the personal request of Henslow, he accompanied Professor Sedgwick on a geological tour in North Wales. In order, no doubt, to give him some independent experience, Sedgwick sent Darwin on a line parallel with his own, telling him to bring back specimens of the rocks and to mark the stratification on a map. In later years Darwin was amazed to find how much both of them had failed to observe, "yet these phenomena were so conspicuous that ... a house burnt down by fire could not tell its story more plainly than did the valley of Cwm Idwal."

With Wallace's removal into Bedfordshire an entirely new life opened up before him. His health, never very good, rapidly improved; both brain and eye were trained to practical observations which proved eminently valuable. His descriptions of the people with whom he came in contact during these years of country life reveal the quiet toleration of the faults and foibles of others, not devoid of the keen sense of humour and justice which characterised his lifelong attitude towards his fellow-men.

The many interests of his new life, together with the use of a pocket sextant, prompted him to make various experiments for himself. The only sources from which he could obtain helpful information, however, were some cheap elementary books on mechanics and optics which he procured from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; these he studied and "puzzled over" for several years. "Having no friends of my own age," he wrote, "I occupied myself with various pursuits in which I had begun to take an interest. Having learnt the use of the sextant in surveying, and my brother having a book on Nautical Astronomy, I practised a few of the simpler observations. Among these were determining the meridian by equal altitudes of the sun, and also by the pole-star at its upper or lower culmination; finding the latitude by the meridian altitude of the sun, or of some of the principal stars; and making a rude sundial by erecting a gnomon towards the pole. For these simple calculations I had Hannay and Dietrichsen's Almanac, a copious publication which gave all the important data in the Nautical Almanac, besides much other interesting matter useful for the astronomical amateur or the ordinary navigator. I also tried to make a telescope by purchasing a lens of about 2 ft. focus at an optician's in Swansea, fixing it in a paper tube and using the eye-piece of a small opera-glass. With it I was able to observe the moon and Jupiter's satellites, and some of the larger star-clusters; but, of course, very imperfectly. Yet it served to increase my interest in astronomy, and to induce me to study with some care the various methods of construction of the more important astronomical instruments; and it also led me throughout my life to be deeply interested in the grand onward march of astronomical discovery."

At the same time Wallace became attracted by, and interested in, the flowers, shrubs and trees growing in that part of Bedfordshire, and he acquired some elementary knowledge of zoology. "It was," he writes, "while living at Barton that I obtained my first information that there was such a science as geology.... My brother, like most land-surveyors, was something of a geologist, and he showed me the fossil oysters of the genus Gryphaea and the Belemnites ... and several other fossils which were abundant in the chalk and gravel around Barton.... It was here, too, that during my solitary rambles I first began to feel the influence of nature and to wish to know more of the various flowers, shrubs and trees I daily met with, but of which for the most part I did not even know the English names. At that time I hardly realised that there was such a science as systematic botany, that every flower and every meanest and most insignificant weed had been accurately described and classified, and that there was any kind of system or order in the endless variety of plants and animals which I knew existed. This wish to know the names of wild plants, to be able to speak ... about them, had arisen from a chance remark I had overheard about a year before. A lady ... whom we knew at Hertford, was talking to some friends in the street when I and my father met them ... I heard the lady say, 'We found quite a rarity the other day--the Monotropa; it had not been found here before.' This I pondered over, and wondered what the Monotropa was. All my father could tell me was that it was a rare plant; and I thought how nice it must be to know the names of rare plants when you found them."

It was in 1841, four years later, that he heard of, and at once procured, a book published at a shilling by the S.P.C.K. , to which he owed his first scientific glimmerings of the vast study of botany. The next step was to procure, at much self-sacrifice, Lindley's "Elements of Botany," published at half a guinea, which to his immense disappointment he found of very little use, as it did not deal with British plants! His disappointment was lessened, however, by the loan from a Mr. Hayward of London's "Encyclopedia of Plants," and it was with the help of these two books that he made his first classification of the specimens which he had collected and carefully kept during the few preceding years.

"It must be remembered," he says in "My Life," "that my ignorance of plants at this time was extreme. I knew the wild rose, bramble, hawthorn, buttercup, poppy, daisy and foxglove, and a very few others equally common.... I knew nothing whatever as to genera and species, nor of the large number of distinct forms related to each and grouped into natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly understood, enabled me to locate each fresh species with greater ease." This, however, was not sufficient, and the last step was to form a herbarium.

"I soon found," he wrote, "that by merely identifying the plants I found in my walks I lost much time in gathering the same species several times, and even then not being always quite sure that I had found the same plant before. I therefore began to form a herbarium, collecting good specimens and drying them carefully between drying papers and a couple of boards weighted with books or stones.... I first named the species as nearly as I could do so, and then laid them out to be pressed and dried. At such times," he continues--and I have quoted the passage for the sake of this revealing confession--"I experienced the joy which every discovery of a new form of life gives to the lover of nature, almost equal to those raptures which I afterwards felt at every capture of new butterflies on the Amazon, or at the constant stream of new species of birds, beetles and butterflies in Borneo, the Moluccas, and the Aru Islands."

Anything in the shape of gardening papers and catalogues which came in his way was eagerly read, and to this source he owed his first interest in the fascinating orchid.

For a brief period, when there was a lull in the surveying business and his prospects of continuing in this profession looked uncertain, he tried watchmaking, and would probably--though not by choice--have been apprenticed to it but for an unexpected circumstance which caused his master to give up his business. Alfred gladly, when the occasion offered, returned to his outdoor life, which had begun to make the strongest appeal to him, stronger, perhaps, than he was really aware.

Early in 1844 another break occurred, due to the sudden falling off of land surveying as a profitable business. His brother could no longer afford to keep him as assistant, finding it indeed difficult to obtain sufficient employment for himself. As Wallace knew no other trade or profession, the only course which occurred to his mind as possible by which to earn a living was to get a post as school teacher.

After one or two rather amusing experiences, he eventually found himself in very congenial surroundings under the Rev. Abraham Hill, headmaster of the Collegiate School at Leicester. Here he stayed for a little more than a year, during which time--in addition to his school work and a considerable amount of hard reading on subjects to which he had not hitherto been able to devote himself--he was led to become greatly interested in phrenology and mesmerism, and before long found himself something of an expert in giving mesmeric demonstrations before small audiences. Phrenology, he believed, proved of much value in determining his own characteristics, good and bad, and in guiding him to a wise use of the faculties which made for his ultimate success; while his introduction to mesmerism had not a little to do with his becoming interested and finally convinced of the part played by spiritualistic forces and agencies in human life.

The most important event, however, during this year at Leicester was his meeting with H.W. Bates, through whom he was introduced to the absorbing study of beetles and butterflies, the link which culminated in their mutual exploration of the Amazon. It is curious that Wallace retained no distinct recollection of how or when he met Bates for the first time, but thought that "he heard him mentioned as an enthusiastic entomologist and met him at the Library." Bates was at this time employed by his father, who was a hosiery manufacturer, and he could therefore only devote his spare time to collecting beetles in the surrounding neighbourhood. The friendship brought new interests into both lives, and though Wallace was obliged a few months later to leave Leicester and return to his old work of surveying , he no longer found in it the satisfaction he had previously experienced, and his letters to Bates expressed the desire to strike out on some new line, one which would satisfy his craving for a definite pursuit in the direction of natural science.

Somewhere about the autumn of 1847, Bates paid a visit to Wallace at Neath, and the plan to go to the Amazon which had been slowly forming itself at length took shape, due to the perusal of a little book entitled "A Voyage up the River Amazon," by W.H. Edwards. Further investigations showed that this would be particularly advantageous, as the district had only been explored by the German zoologist, von Spix, and the botanist von Martins, in 1817-20, and subsequently by Count de Castelnau.

During this interval we find, in a letter to Bates, the following allusion to Darwin, which is the first record of Wallace's high estimate of the man with whom his own name was to be dramatically associated ten years later. "I first," he says, "read Darwin's Journal three or four years ago, and have lately re-read it. As the journal of a scientific traveller it is second only to Humboldt's Narrative; as a work of general interest, perhaps superior to it. He is an ardent admirer and most able supporter of Mr. Lyell's views. His style of writing I very much admire, so free from all labour, or egotism, yet so full of interest and original thought."

The early part of 1848 was occupied in making arrangements with Mr. Samuel Stevens, of King Street, Covent Garden, to act as their agent in disposing of a duplicate collection of specimens which they proposed sending home; by this means paying their expenses during the time they were away, any surplus being invested against their return. This and other matters being satisfactorily settled, they eventually sailed from Liverpool on April 20th in a barque of 192 tons, said to be "a very fast sailer," which proved to be correct. On arriving at Para about a month later, they immediately set about finding a house, learning something of the language, the habits of the people amongst whom they had come to live, and making short excursions into the forest before starting on longer and more trying explorations up country.

Wallace's previous vivid imaginings of what life in the tropics would mean, so far as the surpassing beauty of nature was concerned, were not immediately fulfilled. As a starting-point, however, Para had many advantages. Besides the pleasant climate, the country for some hundreds of miles was found to be nearly level at an elevation of about 30 or 40 ft. above the river; the first distinct rise occurring some 150 miles up the river Tocantins, south-west of Para; the whole district was intersected by streams, with cross channels connecting them, access by this means being comparatively easy to villages and estates lying farther inland.

Before making an extensive excursion into the interior, he spent some time on the larger islands at the mouth of the Amazon, on one of which he immediately noticed the scarcity of trees, while "the abundance of every kind of animal life crowded into a small space was here very striking, compared with the sparse manner in which it is scattered in the virgin forests. It seems to force us to the conclusion that the luxuriance of tropical vegetation is not favourable to the production of animal life. The plains are always more thickly peopled than the forest; and a temperate zone, as has been pointed out by Mr. Darwin, seems better adapted to the support of large land animals than the tropics."

We have already referred to the fact that at the very early age of 14 Wallace had imbibed his first ideas of Socialism, or how the "commonwealth" of a people or nation was the outcome of cause and effect, largely due to the form of government, political economy and progressive commerce best suited to any individual State or country. The seed took deep root, and during the years spent for the most part amongst an agricultural people in England and Wales his interest in these questions had been quickened by observation and intelligent inquiry. It is no wonder, therefore, that during the whole of his travels we find many intimate references to such matters regarding the locality in which he happened to find himself, but which can only be noticed in a very casual manner in this section. For instance, he soon discovered that the climate and soil round Para conduced to the cultivation of almost every kind of food, such as cocoa, coffee, sugar, farinha from the mandioca plant, with vegetables and fruits in inexhaustible variety; while the articles of export included india-rubber, Brazil nuts, and piassaba , as well as sarsaparilla, balsam-capivi, and a few other drugs.

The utter lack of initiative, or even ordinary interest, in making the most of the opportunities lying at hand, struck him again and again as he went from place to place and was entertained hospitably by hosts of various nationalities; until at times the impression is conveyed that apart from his initial interest as a naturalist, a longing seized him to arouse those who were primarily responsible for these conditions out of the apathy into which they had fallen, and to make them realise the larger pleasure which life offers to those who recognise the opportunities at hand, not only for their own advancement but also for the benefit of those placed under their control. All of which we find happily illustrated during his visit to Sarawak, in the Malay Archipelago.

In the meantime, Wallace's younger brother, Herbert, had come out to join him, and for some time their journeys were made conjointly; but finding that his brother was not temperamentally fitted to become a naturalist, it was decided that he should return to England. Accordingly, they parted at Barra when Wallace started on his long journey up the Rio Negro, the duration of which was uncertain; and it was not until many months after the sad event that he heard the distressing news that Herbert had died of yellow fever on the eve of his departure from Para for home. Fortunately, Bates was in Para at the time, and did what he could for the boy until stricken down himself with the same sickness, from which, however, his stronger constitution enabled him to recover.

Perhaps the most eventful and memorable journey during this period was the exploration of the Uaup?s River, of which Wallace wrote nearly sixty years later: "So far as I have heard, no English traveller has to this day ascended the Uaup?s River so far as I did, and no collector has stayed at any time at Javita, or has even passed through it."

From a communication received from the Royal Geographical Society it appears that the first complete survey of this river was made by Dr. Hamilton Rice, starting from the side of Colombia, and tracing the whole course of the river from a point near the source of its head-stream. The result showed that the general course of the lower river was much as represented by Wallace, though considerable corrections were necessary both in latitude and longitude. "I am assured by authorities on the Rio Negro region," writes Dr. Scott Keltie to Mr. W.G. Wallace, under date May 21, 1915, "that your father's work still holds good."

In May, 1852, Wallace returned to Para, and sailed for England the following July. The ship took fire at sea, and all his treasures were unhappily lost. Ten days and nights were spent in an open boat before another vessel picked them up, and in describing this terrible experience he says: "When the danger appeared past I began to feel the greatness of my loss. With what pleasure had I looked upon every rare and curious insect I had added to my collection! How many times, when almost overcome by the ague, had I crawled into the forest and been rewarded by some unknown and beautiful species! How many places, which no European foot but my own had trodden, would have been recalled to my memory by the rare birds and insects they had furnished to my collection! How many weary days and weeks had I passed, upheld only by the fond hope of bringing home many new and beautiful forms from these wild regions ... which would prove that I had not wasted the advantage I had enjoyed, and would give me occupation and amusement for many years to come! And now ... I had not one specimen to illustrate the unknown lands I had trod, or to call back the recollection of the wild scenes I had beheld! But such regrets were vain ... and I tried to occupy myself with the state of things which actually existed."

On reaching London, Wallace took a house in Upper Albany Street, where his mother and his married sister , with her husband, a photographer, came to live with him. The next eighteen months were fully occupied with sorting and arranging such collections as had previously reached England; writing his book of travels up the Amazon and Rio Negro , and a little book on the palm trees based on a number of fine pencil sketches he had preserved in a tin box, the only thing saved from the wreck.

In summing up the most vivid impressions left on his mind, apart from purely scientific results, after his four years in South America, he wrote that the feature which he could never think of without delight was "the wonderful variety and exquisite beauty of the butterflies and birds ... ever new and beautiful, strange and even mysterious," so that he could "hardly recall them without a thrill of admiration and wonder." But "the most unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first meeting and living with man in a state of nature--with absolute uncontaminated savages!... and the surprise of it was that I did not expect to be at all so surprised.... These true wild Indians of the Uaup?s ... had nothing that we call clothes; they had peculiar ornaments, tribal marks, etc.; they all carried tools or weapons of their own manufacture.... But more than all, their whole aspect and manner was different--they were all going about their own work or pleasure, which had nothing to do with white men or their ways; they walked with the free step of the independent forest-dweller, and, except the few that were known to my companion, paid no attention whatever to us, mere strangers of an alien race! In every detail they were original and self-sustaining as are the wild animals of the forest, absolutely independent of civilisation.... I could not have believed that there would have been so much difference in the aspect of the same people in their native state and when living under European supervision. The true denizen of the Amazonian forest, like the forest itself, is unique and not to be forgotten."

The foregoing "impressions" recall forcibly those expressed by Darwin in similar terms at the close of his "Journal": "Delight ... is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage ... the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration. A paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood ... yet within the recesses ... a universal silence appears to reign ... such a day as this brings with it a deeper pleasure than he can ever hope to experience again," And in another place: "Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none can exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; ... temples filled with the various productions of the God of Nature; ... no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."

In complete contrast to the forest, the bare, treeless, and uninhabited plains of Patagonia "frequently crossed before" Darwin's eyes. Why, he could not understand, except that, being so "boundless," they left "free scope for the imagination."

It may be further assumed that Darwin was better equipped mentally--from a scientific point of view--owing to his personal intercourse with eminent scientific men previous to his assuming this responsible position. Wallace, on the contrary, had practically little beyond book-knowledge and such experience as he had been able to gain by solitary wanderings in the localities in which he had, by circumstances, been forced to reside. His plan of operations must, therefore, have been largely modified and adapted as time went on, and as his finances allowed. To both, therefore, credit is due for the adaptability evinced under conditions not always congenial or conducive to the pursuits they had undertaken.

Although the fact is not definitely stated by Wallace, it may readily be inferred that the idea of making this the starting-point of a new life was clearly in his mind; while Darwin simply accepted the opportunity when it came, and was only brought to a consciousness of its full meaning and bearing on his future career whilst studying the geological aspect of Santiago when "the line of white rock revealed a new and important fact," namely, that there had been afterwards subsidence round the craters, which had since been in action and had poured forth lava. "It then," he says, "first dawned on me that I might perhaps write a book on the geology of the various countries visited, and this made me thrill with delight. That was a memorable hour to me; and how distinctly I can call to mind the low cliff of lava, beneath which I rested, with the sun glaring hot, a few strange desert plants growing near, and with living corals in the tidal pools at my feet!"

Another point of comparison lies in the fact that at no time did the study of man or human nature, from the metaphysical and psychological point of view, appeal to Darwin as it did to Wallace; and this being so, the similarity between the impression made on them individually by their first contact with primitive human beings is of some interest.

Wallace's words have already been quoted; here are Darwin's: "Nothing is more certain to create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a barbarian, of man in his lowest and most savage state. One asks: 'Could our progenitors have been men like these--men whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason?' I do not believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference between a savage and civilised man. It is the difference between a wild and tame animal."

The last words suggest the seed-thought eventually to be enlarged in "The Descent of Man," and there is also perhaps a subtle suggestion of the points in which Wallace differed from Darwin when the time came for them to discuss this important section of the theory of Evolution. It needed, however, the further eight years spent by Wallace in the Malay Archipelago to bring about a much wider knowledge of nature-science before he was prepared in any way to assume the position of exponent of theories not seriously thought of previously in the scientific world.

In the autumn of 1853, on the completion of his "Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," Wallace paid his first visit to Switzerland, on a walking tour in company with his friend George Silk. On his return, and during the winter months, he was constant in his attendance at the meetings of the Entomological and Zoological Societies. It was at one of these evening gatherings that he first met Huxley, and he also had a vague recollection of once meeting and speaking to Darwin at the British Museum. Had it not been for his extreme shyness of disposition, and "lack of conversational powers," he would doubtless have become far more widely known, and have enjoyed the friendship of not a few of the eminent men who shared his interests, during this interval before starting on his journey to Singapore.

It was due to his close study of the Insect and Bird Departments of the British Museum that he decided on Singapore as a new starting-point for his natural history collections. As the region was generally healthy, and no part of it had been explored, it offered unlimited attractions for his special work. But as the journey out would be an expensive one, he was advised to lay his plans before Sir Roderick Murchison, then President of the Royal Geographical Society, and it was through his kindly interest and personal application to the Government that a passage was provided in one of the P. and O. boats going to Singapore. He left early in 1854. Arrived at Singapore, an entirely new world opened up before him. New peoples and customs thronged on all hands, a medley of nationalities such as can only be seen in the East, where, even to-day, and though forming part of one large community, each section preserves its native dress, customs and religious habits. After spending some time at Singapore he moved from place to place, but finally decided upon making Ternate his head-quarters, as he discovered a comfortable bungalow, not too large, and adaptable in every way as a place in which to collect and prepare his specimens between the many excursions to other parts of the Archipelago. The name is now indelibly associated with that particular visit which ended after a trying journey in an attack of intermittent fever and general prostration, during which he first conceived the idea which has made Ternate famous in the history of natural science.

One or two points in the following letters recall certain contrasts similar to those already drawn between Darwin's impression of places and people and those made on the mind of Wallace by practically the same conditions. A typical instance is found in their estimate of the life and work of the missionaries whom they met and from whom they received the warmest hospitality. Their experience included both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and from Darwin's account the former appeared to him to have the more civilising effect on the people, not only from a religious but also from the economic and industrial points of view.

In the "Journal" we find a detailed account of a visit to the missionary settlement at Waimate, New Zealand. After describing the familiar English appearance of the whole surroundings, he adds: "All this is very surprising when it is considered that five years ago nothing but the fern flourished here. Moreover, native workmanship, taught by these missionaries, has effected this change--the lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's wand. The house had been built, the windows framed, the fields ploughed, and even the trees grafted, by the New Zealander. When I looked at the whole scene it was admirable. It was not that England was brought vividly before my mind; ... nor was it the triumphant feeling at seeing what Englishmen could effect; but rather the high hopes thus inspired for the future progress of this fine island."

No such feeling was inspired by the conditions surrounding the Roman Catholic missionaries whom he met from time to time. In an earlier part of the "Journal" he records an evening spent with one living in a lonely place in South America who, "coming from Santiago, had contrived to surround himself with some few comforts. Being a man of some little education, he bitterly complained of the total want of society. With no particular zeal for religion, no business or pursuit, how completely must this man's life be wasted."

In complete opposition to these views, passages occur in the following letters which show that Wallace thought more highly of the Roman Catholic than of the Protestant missionaries. In one place, speaking of the former, he says: "Most are Frenchmen ... well-educated men who give up their lives for the good of the people they live among, I think Catholics and Protestants are equally wrong, but as missionaries I think Catholics are the best, and I would gladly see none others rather than have, as in New Zealand, sects of native Dissenters more rancorous against each other than in England. The unity of the Catholics is their strength, and an unmarried clergy can do as missionaries what married men never can undertake."

As a sidelight on these contradictory estimates of the same work, it should be borne in mind that Darwin had but recently given up the idea of becoming a clergyman, and doubtless retained some of the instinctive regard for sincere Christian Protestantism , while Wallace had long since relinquished all doctrinal ideas on religion and all belief in the beneficial effect produced by forms of worship on the individual.

It was in 1854 that Wallace came to Sarawak. I was there then, sent by a private firm, which later became the Borneo Company, to open up, by mining, manufacture and trade, the resources of the country, and amongst these enterprises was coal-mining on the west. Wallace came in search of new specimens of animal and especially insect life. The clearing of ancient forests at these mines offered a naturalist great opportunities, and I gave Wallace an introduction to our engineer in charge there. His collections of beetles and butterflies there were phenomenal; but the district was also the special home of the great ape, the orang-utan, or meias, as the natives called them, of which he obtained so many valuable specimens. Many notes must at that time have passed between us, for I took much interest in his work. We had put up a temporary hut for him at the mines, and on my occasional visits there I saw him and his young assistant, Charles Allen, at work, admired his beautiful collections, and gave my help in forwarding them.

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