Alfred Russel Wallace 



everywhere a meaning in the varying modes of organic life, 

 and in response to his sympathetic mind Nature revealed to 

 him more of her multitudinous secrets than to most others. 

 Wallace's Amazonian travels were far from unfruitful, in 

 spite of the irreparable loss he sustained in the burning of 

 his notes and the bulk of his collections in the vessel by which 

 he was returning home ; but it was in the Malay Archipelago 

 that his most celebrated years of investigation were passed, 

 which marked him as one of the greatest naturalists of our 

 time. As a methodical natural history collector — which is 

 '' the best sport in the world " according to Darwin — he has 

 never been surpassed ; and few naturalists, if any, have ever 

 brought together more enormous collections than he. The 

 mere statement, taken from his " Malay Archipelago," of 

 the number of his captures in the Archipelago in six years 

 of actual collecting, exceeding 125,000 specimens — a number 

 greater than the entire contents of many large museums — • 

 still causes amazement. The value of a collection, however, 

 depends on the full and accurate information attached to 

 each specimen, and from this point of view only a few col- 

 lections, including Darwin's and Bates's, have possessed the 

 great scientific value of his. 



Wallace's Eastern explorations included nearly all the 

 large and the majority of the smaller islands of the Archi- 

 pelago. Many of them he was the first naturalist to visit, 

 or to reside on. Ceram, Batjian, Burn, Lombok, Timor, 

 Aru, Ke and New Guinea had never been previously 

 scientifically investigated. When in 1858 '' the first and 

 greatest of the naturalists," as Dr. Wollaston styles Wal- 

 lace, visited New Guinea, it was '' the first time that any 

 European had ventured to reside alone and practically un- 

 protected on the mainland of this country," which, danger- 

 ous as it is now in the same regions, was infinitely more so 

 then. Of the journals of his voyagings, '^ The Malay Archi- 

 pelago " will always be ranked among the greatest narra- 

 tives of travel. The fact that this volume has gone through 

 a dozen editions is witness to its extraordinary popularity 

 among intelligent minds, and hardly supports the belief 

 that his scientific work has been forgotten. Nor can this 



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