Alfred Russel Wallace 



Archipelago he has given us a most interesting narrative, 

 detailing their bodily and mental characteristics, and show- 

 ing how their distribution accorded with that of the fauna 

 on the opposite sides — Malays to the West, Papuans to the 

 East — of Wallace's Line. If fuller investigation of the 

 New Guinea tribes requires some modification in regard 

 to their origin, his observations, as broadly outlined then, 

 remain true still. His opinions on the origin of the Aus- 

 tralian aborigines — that they were a low and primitive type 

 of Caucasian race — which, when first promulgated, were 

 somewhat sceptically received, are now those accepted by 

 many very competent anthropologists. 



Wallace's contributions to Geographical Science were 

 only second in importance to those he so pre-eminently 

 made to biology. Though skilled in the use of surveying 

 instruments, he did little or no map-making — at all times 

 a laborious and lengthy task — for, with more important 

 purposes in his mind, he could not spare the time, nor did 

 the limitations to his movements permit any useful attempt. 

 Yet he did pure geographical work quite as important. The 

 value of the comparative study of the flora and fauna of 

 neighbouring regions, the great differences in the midst of 

 much likeness between the organic life of neighbouring land 

 masses, was a subject that was always in Wallace's mind 

 during his exploration of the Amazon Valley, for he per- 

 ceived that the physical geography and the distribution of 

 these animals and plants were of the greatest service in 

 elucidating their history w^here the geological record was 

 defective. As is well known, the visual inspection of the 

 geological structure of tropical countries is always difficult 

 and often impossible to make out because of the dense vege- 

 tation upon the surface and even the faces of the river gorges. 

 But for the loss of his collections and notes we should have 

 had from Wallace's pen a Physical History of the Amazon. 

 This loss was, however, amply made up by his very original 

 contributions to the geography of the Malay Archipelago. 

 " The Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago " and 

 " The Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago " (writ- 

 ten on Eastern soil, with the texts of his discourses around 



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