WALLACE'S VIEWS. 91 



Essays on Natural Selection). The law he states in 

 these words : — 



" Every species has come into existence coincident both in 

 time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species," 



a law which, as he justly claims for it, 



" connects together and renders intelligible a vast number of 

 independent and hitherto unexplained facts. The natural 

 system of arrangement of organic beings, their geographical 

 distribution, their geological sequence, the phenomena of 

 representative and substituted groups in all their modifica- 

 tions, and the most singular peculiarities of anatomical 

 structure, are all explained and illustrated by it, in perfect 

 accordance with the vast mass of facts which the researches 

 of modern naturalists have brought together, and, it is 

 believed, not materially opposed to any of them. It also 

 claims a superiority over previous hypotheses, on the ground 

 that it not merely explains, but necessitates what exists. 

 Granted the law, and many of the most important facts in 

 Nature could not have been otherwise, but are almost as 

 necessary deductions from it, as are the elliptic orbits of the 

 planets from the law of gravitation." 



This important essay is dated by Wallace from 

 Sarawak, Borneo, February, 1855. 



The conclusions remind us of the words Darwin 

 wrote in his note-book in 1837. " Led to comprehend 

 true affinities. My theory would give zest to recent 

 and Fossil comparative Anatomy." By his theory 

 Darwin here means evolution and not natural selec- 

 tion, which was not discovered by him until the end 

 of 1838. 



