138 Notes and News. '- 



LJan. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Alfred Russel Wallace, D, C. L., O. M., F. R. S., an Honorary 

 Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union, died on November 7, 1913, 

 in the ninety-first year of his age, and after sixty-four consecutive years of 

 scientific activity. 



Wallace, while standing in the highest rank among ornithologists, 

 entomologists and botanists is best known in the broader field of philosophy 

 and evolutionary thought, where his name is closely linked with those of 

 Lyell and Darwin; and especially will he ever be remembered for his joint 

 publication with Darwin of their independent discovery of the theory of 

 Natural Selection. Wallace was typical of a group of scientific men of 

 the last century, which may well be known by the name 'naturalists,' 

 among which he ranked at the very top and of which he was the last 

 survivor. 



In the present days of specialization it seems impossible for men of this 

 type to develop and it is doubtful if the world wiU ever again see men of 

 such broad learning as those who contributed to the fame of what Wallace 

 himself has termed ' the Wonderful Century.' 



He was born in the village of Usk in Monmouthshire, England, on 

 January 8, 1823, the son of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Grennell. 

 He attended grammar school until about thirteen years of age and appar- 

 ently received much educational benefit from association with his father 

 who was a man of literary tastes then engaged in tutoring. 



The family being in poor cu'cumstances Wallace was taken from school 

 and for seven years pursued the study and practice of land surveying with 

 his brother. His attention had already, through some of his early reading, 

 been directed to plants, and he now in his spare time amused himself by 

 collecting specimens of the wild flowers of the vicinity of the towns where 

 he lived and to name them as well as he could from certain inadequate 

 books on botany of which he had come into possession. He says in his 

 autobiography of these early collections, "I experienced the joy which every 

 discovery of a new form of life gives to the lover of nature, about equal to 

 the rhapsodies which I afterwards felt at every capture of a new butterfly 

 on the Amazon, or at the constant stream of new species of birds, beetles 

 and butterflies in Borneo, the Moluccas and the Am Islands." 



Surveying not proving profitable, he gave it up when he became of age 

 and obtained a position as a teacher in a school in Leicester. Here he 

 met Henry W. Bates, a man of kindred tastes, who had a collection of 

 British beetles which amazed Wallace, as he had no idea that such a 

 variety of these insects occurred in England. He at once became an 

 ardent entomologist and advanced in his knowledge of this branch of 

 natural science as rapidly as he had in botany. 



Influenced by the perusal of Edward's 'Voyage up the Amazon' Wallace 



