214 COXTIUHUTORS TO TIIIC IIUST SERIES OF 'tHE IBIS.' 



' Mischief of 192 tons register. Their joint explorations of 

 the mighty Amazon and the surrounding districts cannot ])e 

 given in detail here, but will he found in Bates's ' Naturalist 

 on the Amazon ' and Wallace's ' Travels on the Amazon/ 

 while the latter contributed a paper to the ' Proceedings ' of 

 the Zoological Society of London for 1850 (p, 206). The 

 fauna and flora were very thoroughly investigated, but 

 unfortunately Wallace lost all his valuable collections while 

 on his return to England in 1852. He had started from 

 Parii in the ' Helen/ which took fire during her voyage, and 

 the passengers spent no less than ten days and ten nights in a 

 boat before they were picked up by the ' Jordeson/ which 

 finally landed them at Deal. 



On reaching Engknd the subject of our notice Avas not 

 long in making the acquaintance of the great scientific men 

 of the time, and he soon began a long course of scientific 

 writings with a paper on INIonkeys, read before the Zoological 

 Society. He visited Switzerland in 1853, and Avas sufficiently 

 struck by that country to return there on two subsequent 

 occasions. During this year he published his ' Travels on 

 the Amazon' and his 'Palm Trees of the Amazon.' 



In 1854 Wallace left England by himself on the P. & O. 

 steamer ' Bengal ' for Singapore, whence he journeyed 

 through many parts of the Malay Archipelago, to Borneo, 

 Macassar, Celebes, the Moluccas, New Guinea, Timor, Java, 

 and Sumatra, making large collections and gathering an 

 immense amount of the most varied information. As a 

 result he became deeply impressed by the idea of " Natural 

 Selection" in regard to the perpetuation of species, and 

 forwarded to England an essay entitled ' On the Tendency 

 of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type.' 

 Though Wallace was unaAvare of the fact at the time, Darwin 

 had since 1837 been Avorking on similar lines, and the 

 appearance of this essay in London was the first link of a 

 chain that finally resulted in the production of the 'Origin 

 of Species,' which Darwin himself tells us C Life and Letters 

 of Charles Darwin/ vol. ii. p. 115) might never have been 

 completed, at least in its present form, but for the incentive 



