Alfred Russel Wallace 



unknown and beautiful species! How many places, which 

 no European foot but my own had trodden, would have 

 been recalled to my memory by the rare birds and insects 

 they had furnished to my collection! How many weary 

 days and weeks had I passed, upheld only by the fond 

 hope of bringing home many new and beautiful forms 

 from these wild regions . . . which would prove that I 

 had not wasted the advantage I had enjoyed, and would 

 give me occupation and amusement for many years to 

 come ! And now ... I had not one specimen to illustrate 

 the unknown lands I had trod, or to call back the recollec- 

 tion of the wild scenes I had beheld ! But such regrets 

 were vain . . . and I tried to occupy myself with the state 

 of things which actually existed.'" 



On reaching London, Wallace took a house in Upper 

 Albany Street, where his mother and his married sister 

 (Mrs. Sims), with her husband, a photographer, came to 

 live with him. The next eighteen months were fully occu- 

 pied with sorting and arranging such collections as had 

 previously reached England ; writing his book of travels up 

 the Amazon and Kio Negro (published in the autumn of 

 1853), and a little book on the palm trees based on a number 

 of fine pencil sketches he had preserved in a tin box, the 

 only thing saved from the wreck. 



In summing up the most vivid impressions left on his 

 mind, apart from purely scientific results, after his four 

 years in South America, he wrote that the feature which 

 he could never think of without delight was ^' the wonder- 

 ful variety and exquisite beauty of the butterflies and birds 

 . . . ever new and beautiful, strange and even mysterious," 

 so that he could ^^ hardly recall them without a thrill of 

 admiration and wonder.'' But ^' the most unexpected 

 sensation of surprise and delight was my first meeting and 



1 " Travels on the Amazon," p. 277. 

 30 



