Evolutionary hero

When I realised whose centenary it was this became an obligatory blip. It's the title page and frontispiece of The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace who died on this day 100 years ago. It was one of my very favourite books as a child and its worn green buckram cover with faded gold lettering is as familiar as the back of my own hand. (The book was first published in 1869 but mine is the 1883 edition.)

Wallace is usually described as the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, along with the much more celebrated Charles Darwin. Neither of them was the first to doubt the idea of divine creation but it was Wallace's letter to Darwin in 1858, outlining his thoughts on evolution, that prompted Darwin to publish his incendiary work On the Origin of Species. The two men subsequently became friends and collaborators and Darwin always acknowledged Wallace's independent arrival at the same conclusions but over the course of time the reputation of the former soared while the latter sank into relative obscurity. Today sees the unveiling of the very first statue of Wallace, at the Natural History Museum in London. The omission has been inexcusable. The campaign to raise funds has been spearheaded by the comedian Bill Bailey who followed in Wallace's footsteps for a TV programme.

Charles Darwin remains a towering figure in the history of science. He had the advantage of coming from a well-heeled intellectual dynasty and was blessed with wealth and privilege as a result. His three year voyage on the Beagle allowed him to explore distant lands in relative comfort and with support always on hand. Subsequently he lived a very comfortable life devoted to study and debate. Wallace had none of those advantages. He came from a modest background, never went to university only the London mechanic's institute, and had to fund his travels by collecting and selling specimens. He spent 8 years in Malaysia, living in remote and primitive conditions and relying on the help of local tribespeople to get around and to subsist. He documented 126,000 insects, birds and mammals all of which he drew and preserved many to take home.

An extract from the above book describes the conditions in which he achieved this, all the while forming his revolutionary ideas largely as a result of observing the diversity of species in the wild, and in particular the divergence between animals living on either side of the so-called Wallace Line, a geographical barrier dividing Asiatic type species from Australian type species.

My collecting operations here were carried on under more than usual difficulties. One small room had to serve for eating, sleeping and working,and one for storehouse and dissecting-room; in it were no shelves, cupboards, chairs or tables; ants swarmed in every part of it, and dogs, cats and fowls entered it at pleasure. Besides this it was the parlour and reception-room of my host, and I was obliged to consult his convenience and that of the numerous guests who visited us. My principal piece of furniture was a box, which served me as a dining table, a seat while skinning birds, and as the receptacle of the birds when skinned and dried. To keep them free from ants we borrowed, with some difficulty, an old bench, the four legs of which being placed in cocoa-nut shells filled with water kept us tolerably free from these pests. The box and the bench were, however, literally the only places where anything could be put away, and they were generally well occupied by two insect boxes and about a hundred birds’ skins in process of drying. It may therefore be easily conceived that when anything bulky or out of the common way was collected, the question “Where is it to be put?” was rather a difficult one to answer. All animal substances moreover require some time to dry thoroughly, emit a very disagreeable odour while doing so, and are particularly attractive to ants, flies, dogs, rats, cats, and other vermin, calling for special cautions and constant supervision, which under the circumstances above described were impossible.


There's plenty about Wallace on the internet and he repays further investigation. His later life was interesting too. He was a socialist and believed in land reform as a follower of Henry George's single tax advocacy. His eventual espousal of spiritualism however did not sit well with his scientific credentials and may have led to his side-lining.