110 THE COMING [CH. 



earnestly on the problem and who eventually reached 

 the same goal. 



Alfred Russel Wallace was born thirteen years 

 after Darwin, and a quarter of a century after Lyell. 

 He did not possess the moderate income that permits 

 of entire devotion to scientific research an ad- 

 vantage, the importance of which in their own cases, 

 both Lyell and Darwin were always so ready to 

 acknowledge. Wallace, after working for a time as a 

 land-surveyor and then as a teacher, at the age of 26 

 set off with another naturalist, H. W. Bates, on a 

 collecting tour in South America hoping by the sale 

 of specimens to cover the expenses of travel Like 

 Lyell and Darwin, he was an enthusiastic entomologist, 

 and had conceived the same passion for travel. He 

 had, as we have already seen, been deeply impressed 

 by reading the Principles of Geology, and after 

 spending four years in South America undertook a 

 second collecting tour, which lasted twice that time, 

 in the Malay Archipelago. 



Before leaving England in 1848, Wallace had 

 read and been impressed by reading the Vestiges of 

 Creation, and there can be no doubt that from that 

 period the question of evolution was always more or 

 less distinctly present in his mind. While in Sarawak 

 in the wet season, he tells us, ' I was quite alone with 

 one Malay boy as cook, and during the evenings and 

 wet days I had nothing to do but to look over my 

 books and ponder over the problem which was rarely 



