Characteristics 



popularity be a matter of much surprise, for few travellers 

 have possessed Wallace's powers of exposition, his lucidity 

 and charm of style. Professor Strasburger of Bonn has 

 declared that through " The Malay Archipelago " "a, new 

 world of scientific knowledge " was unfolded before him. 

 '' I feel it ... my duty," he adds, ^' to proclaim it with 

 gratitude." Wallace's narrative has attracted during the 

 past half-century numerous naturalists to follow in his 

 tracks, many of whom have reaped rich aftermaths of his 

 harvest; but certain it is that no explorer in the same, if 

 in any other, region has approached his eminence, or attained 

 the success he achieved. 



As a systematic zoologist, Wallace took no inconsiderable 

 place; his metier^ however, was different. He described, 

 nevertheless, large sections of his Lepidoptera and of his 

 birds, on which many valuable papers are printed in the 

 Transactions of the learned societies and in various scientific 

 periodicals. Of the former, special mention may be made 

 of that on variation in the '^ Papilionidae of the Malayan 

 Kegion," of which Darwin has recorded : "I have never 

 in my life been more struck by any paper." Of the latter, 

 reference may be drawn to his account of the '' Pigeons of 

 the Malay Archipelago " and his paper on the " Passerine 

 Birds," in which he proposed an important new arrange- 

 ment of the families of that group (used later in his 

 *' Geographical Distribution ") based on the feathering of 

 their wings. Without a lengthy search through the zoo- 

 logical records, it would be impossible to say how many 

 species Wallace added to science; but the constant recur- 

 rence in the Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum of 

 " wallacei " as the name bestowed on various new species 

 by other systematists, and of " Wallace " succeeding those 

 scientifically named by himself, is an excellent gauge of 

 their very large number. 



In the field of anthropology Wallace could never be an 

 uninterested spectator. He took a deep interest, he tells 

 us, in the study of the various races of mankind. His 

 accounts of the Amazonian tribes suffered greatly by the 

 loss of his journals; but of the peoples of the Malay 



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