112 THE COMING [OH. 



and as his thoughts wandered to the ever-present 

 problem of species, there suddenly recurred to his 

 memory the writings of Malthus, which he had read 

 twelve years before. Then and there, 'in a sudden 

 flash of insight' the idea of natural selection pre- 

 sented itself to his mind, and after a few hours' 

 thought the chief points were written down, and 

 within a week the matter was ' copied on thin letter- 

 paper ' and sent to Darwin by the next post, with a 

 letter to the following effect 113 . Wallace stated that 

 the idea seemed new to himself and he asked Darwin, 

 if he also thought it new, to show it to Lyell, who 

 had taken so much interest in his former paper. 

 Little did Wallace think, in the absence of all 

 knowledge on his part of Darwin's own conclusions, 

 what stir would be made by his paper when it arrived 

 in England ! 



Wallace's essay was entitled On the Tendency of 

 Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original 

 Type, and it is a singularly lucid and striking 

 presentment, in small compass, of the theory of 

 Natural Selection. 



Had these two men been of less noble and 

 generous nature, the history of science might have 

 been dishonoured by a painful discussion on a 

 question of priority. Fortunately we are not called 

 upon for anything like a judicial investigation of 

 rival claims ; for Darwin as soon as he read the essay 

 saw that as Lyell had often warned him might be 



