LITTLE ment of the Wallace theme startled Darwin. He had 

 JOURNEYS been working on the idea for twenty years, and had an 



immense mass of data bearing on the subject, which 

 he some day intended to issue in book form. 

 His paper for the Linnaeus Society simply summed up 

 his convictions. And now here was a man with whom 

 he had never discussed this particular subject, writing 

 an almost identical paper and sending it to him of all 

 men ! ^t ^t 



Well did he pinch his leg, and call in his wife, asking 

 her if he were alive or dead. Straightway he went to 

 see Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, both more 

 eminent than he in the scientific world, and laid the 

 matter before them. After a long conference it was de- 

 cided that both papers should be read the same evening 

 before the Linnaeus Society, and this was done on the 

 evening of July 1, 1858. 



Darwin then decided to publish his " Origin of Species," 

 which in his preface he modestly calls an "Abstract." 

 The publication was hastened by the fact that Wallace 

 was compiling a similar work. After giving Wallace 

 full credit in his most interesting " Introduction," and 

 reviewing all that others had said in coming to similar 

 conclusions, Darwin fired his shot heard 'round the 

 world. And no man was more delighted and pleased 

 with the echoing reverberations than Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, as he read the book in far-off Australia. 

 The honor of discovering the Law of Evolution, and 

 lifting it out of the hazy realms of hypothesis and poetry 

 into the sunlight of science, will ever be shared between 

 90 



