^°m4^T A^o^es and News. 139 



and Bates decided upon an expedition to Brazil for the collecting of scien- 

 tific specimens. They arranged with Samuel Stevens to act as agent, in 

 receiving and disposing of their collections and Wallace set about practicing 

 the shooting and skinning of birds, the study of ornithology having appar- 

 ently failed to attract him prior to this time. They sailed on April 20, 

 1848, and after a voyage of twenty-nine days landed at Para. 



Wallace remained in Brazil until 1852, making excursions partly in 

 conjunction with Bates, partly on his own account. He ascended the Rio 

 Negro to the second cataract at Juaurit6 on the river Uaupes, farther than 

 any other explorer succeeded in penetrating until 1881 . He made extremely 

 valuable collections especially of insects and birds, but being shipwrecked 

 on the voyage home, he lost all of his private collections, and apart from his 

 experience, profited only by the proceeds of the material sold for him by 

 Stevens. 



He had however made quite a reputation as a collector and explorer and 

 had contributed a paper to the Zoological Society on the Umbrella-bird 

 of the Amazon, so that he gained the entr6 to scientific circles in London. 

 During the next two years he spent most of his time at the British M useum 

 familiarizing himself wnth the literature and collections bearing upon the 

 natural history of the East Indies, whither he planned to direct his next 

 explorations. He secured a copy of Bonaparte's 'Conspectus Avium' 

 in which he marked all the East Indian birds adding on the margins descrip- 

 tions of additional species, as he had done with his first book on botany at 

 the outset of his natural history studies. He was thus, he says, "able to 

 identify nearly every species" that he foimd, and he adds, "no one who is 

 not a naturalist and collector can imagine the value of this book to me." 

 He sailed for the East Indies in 1854. 



Almost at once he began sending back not only collections of birds and 

 insects but contributions to various scientific journals treating of a variety 

 of subjects, but especially of comparisons of the faunas of different islands, 

 and upon various topics bearing upon the origin and relation of species. 

 In 1858 from the island of Temate, he wrote his famous letter to Darwin, 

 outlining the theory of Natural Selection and from then on this subject 

 was ever uppermost in his mind. While his knowledge of the bird life 

 of the East Indies at this time was greater than that of any other naturalist, 

 he described but few species, passing rapidly from the systematic view of 

 nature to the broader philosophical attitude which grew out of it and which 

 characterized his future life with ever increasing force. He says himself: 

 "I had in fact been bitten by the passion for species and their description 

 and if neither Darwin nor myself had hit upon Natural Selection I might 

 have spent the best years of my life in this comparatively profitless work. 

 But the new idea swept all this away. I have for the most part left others 

 to describe my discoveries and have devoted myself to the great generaliza- 

 tions which the laborious work of species-describers has rendered possible." 

 For eight years he continued his explorations extending them to the Aru 

 Islands and the coast of New Guinea in the pursuit of Birds of Paradise. 



