Daricin- Wallace Celebration, 111 



JSote on the passages of MALTHUS'S ' Principles of Population ' 

 ichich suggested the idea of Natural Selection to Darwin 

 and myself. 



By ALFRED R. WALLACE. 



IN order to refresh my memory I have again looked through 

 Malthus's work, and I feel sure that what influenced me 

 was not any special passage or passages, but the cumulative 

 effect of chapters iii. to xii. of the first volume (and more 

 especially chapters iii. to viii.) occupying about 150 pages. 

 In these chapters are comprised very detailed accounts from 

 all available sources, of the various causes which keep down 

 the population of savage and barbarous nations, in America, 

 Africa, and Asia, notwithstanding that they all possess a 

 power of increase sufficient to produce a dense population 

 for any of the continents in a few centuries. 



In order to give an idea, though a very imperfect one, 

 of the nature of the facts adduced by him, I have selected 

 the following passages as being fairly illustrative of the 

 whole. The references are to the sixth edition, London : 

 1826, vol. i. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Of the Checks to Population among the American Indians. 

 Pages 35-37, line 2. 



"We may next turn our view to the vast continent 

 of America, the greatest part of which was found to be 

 inhabited by small independent tribes of savages, subsisting, 

 nearly like the natives of New Holland, on the productions 

 of unassisted nature. The soil was covered by an almost 

 universal forest, and presented few of those fruits and 

 esculent vegetables which grow in such profusion in the 

 islands of the South Sea. The produce of a most rude 

 and imperfect agriculture, known to some of the tribe 

 of hunters, was so trifling as to be considered only as a 

 feeble aid to the subsistence acquired by the chase. The 



