ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. 27 



September. Aberration of A, aglaia. — Mr. A. E. Tonge, a specimen 

 of An/ijniiis (u/laia with a strongly marked blotch formed by the 

 coalescence of several spots on the forewings. 



Alfred Russell Wallace, I823-I9I3. 



Daily papers, weekly periodicals and magazines of all kinds have 

 repeated the ordinary human details of the life of the great scientist 

 who, for more than half a century, held the world at audience, so that 

 it seems superfluous to repeat them here. But perhaps an attempt 

 to look at his entomological work may be not quite uninteresting 

 to our readers. It has been said that an entomologist should 

 have two lives, one to collect and know his material, the other to 

 bring- out the scientific bearing of what has been so assiduously 

 collected. In his long life of 90 years Alfred Russell Wallace enjoyed 

 these two lives, so to speak, and made use of them both to the full, as 

 well as using a large proportion of his energies in his later years in 

 applying his observations and scientific methods of thinking to the 

 solution of the many difficult social problems of the day. 



His early efforts in natural history began about 1840, when we 

 find him devoting his spare time to collecting and preserving plants 

 and eagerly reading books of travel. About 1844, when living at 

 Leicester, he met with H. W. Bates, an ardent entomologist, and no 

 doubt, under his guidance, extended his love of nature to insects. The 

 mutual love of natural history and travel at last became so dominant 

 in the desires of both that a joint expedition to the Amazons was 

 commenced in 1848, for the purpose of collecting natural history 

 specimens and to gather facts, as Wallace tells us, " towards solving 

 the problem of the origin of species." 



After four adventurous years on the Amazons and the Eio Negro, 

 he returned home in 1852, and the following year published his 

 " Travels on the Amazon," a work which contains a vast assemblage 

 of facts, forming a broad basis for suggestion as to the causes and 

 modes of the transformation of species. Scarcely a chapter of this 

 charming work but contains many observations on the magnificent 

 butterflies and beetles of this prolific region. One of his first obser- 

 vations was to note the large number of species of butterflies, while 

 the number of individuals of each species were by no means numerous. 

 In two months 553 species of Lepidoptera were taken, of which more 

 than 400 were Rhopalocera. Of insects of all orders, he met with 

 1,300 species in the same period. 



Of the papers written by him at this period perhaps the following 

 were the most interesting : — 



Remarks on the Habits of the Heaperiidae. 1853. " Zoologist." 



On the Insects used for Food by the Indians of the Amazons. 

 1854. " Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond." 



On the Habits of the Butterflies of the Amazon Valley. 1854. 

 " Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond." 



In 1854 Wallace was again on bis travels, this time eastward, and 

 the next eight years were spent in visiting and collecting over the 

 larger islands of the Malay Archipelago, not even excepting New 

 Guinea. Although he returned in 18B2 it was not until 1869 that his 

 delightful book of travel, the "Malay Archipelago" was published. 



