THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1913 



ALFEED EUS.SEL WALLACE, 1823-1913^ 



By Dr. henry FAIRFIELD OSBORN 



KESEAHCII PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN COLIMBIA TNIVEESITY 



ALFRED EUSSEL AVALLACE, the last survivor of the great group 

 of British naturalists of the nineteenth century, passed away on 

 November 7, 1913, in the ninetj^-first year of his age and the sixty- 

 fourth year of active service and productiveness. He followed by only a 

 few months another member of the group, Sir Joseph Hooker, who 

 introduced the famous Darwin- Wallace papers on Natural Selection to 

 the Linnoean Society in 1858. 



Lyell, Darwin and Wallace were three successive but closely kin- 

 dred spirits whose work began and ended with what will be known as 

 the second groat epoch of evolutionary thought, the first being that of 

 the precursors of Darwin and the third that in which we live. They 

 established evolution through a continued line of attack by precisely 

 similar methods of observation and reasoning over an extremely broad 

 field. As to the closeness of the intellectual sequence between these three 

 men, those who know the original edition of the second volume of "The 

 Principles of Geology," published in 1832, must regard it as the second 

 biologic classic of the century — the first being Lamarck's "Philosophie 

 Zoologique '"' of 1809^ — on which Darwin through his higher and much 

 more creative vision built up his " Journal of Eesearches." When Lyell 

 faltered in the application of his own principles, Darwin went on, and 

 was followed by Wallace. 



The two elder men may be considered to have united in guiding the 



1 An abstract of this biographical sketch appeared in Nature, Thursday, 

 June 13, 1912, Vol. 89, No. 2224, entitled, "Scientific Worthies. XXXVIIL— 

 Dr. Alfred Eussel Wallace, D.C.L., O.M., F.R.S. ' ' The writer had the pleasure 

 of receiving a letter from the veteran naturalist June 16, 1912, in which he 

 wrote : "I thank you very much for the complete and careful account of my 

 scientific work and for the great honor you have done me in linking my name 

 with those of Lyell, Darwin and Galton. Your article is by far the best ac- 

 count of my TTork and of the various influences which determined its direction 

 and the conclusions at which I have arrived. ..." 



