BOTH ESSAYS PUBLISHED. 63 



which took the form of a letter to the Secretary of 

 the Society. In this letter they introduced to the 

 Society "the results of the investigations of the 

 indefatigable naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin and 

 Mr. Alfred Wallace." 



" These gentlemen having, independently and unknown to 

 one another, conceived the same very ingenious theory to 

 account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and 

 of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the 

 merit of being original thinkers in this important line of 

 enquiry; but neither of them having published his views, 

 though Mr. Darwin has for many years past been repeatedly 

 urged by us to do so, and both authors having now unre- 

 servedly placed their papers in our hands, we think it would 

 best promote the interests of science that a selection from 

 them should be laid before the Linnean Society." 



After giving a list of these selections, they say of 

 Wallace's essay 



" This was written at Ternate * in February, 1858, for the 

 perusal of his friend and correspondent Mr. Darwin, and sent 

 to him with the expressed wish that it should be forwarded to 

 Sir Charles Lyell, if Mr. Darwin thought it sufficiently novel 

 and interesting. So highly did Mr. Darwin appreciate the 

 value of the views therein set forth, that he proposed, in a 

 letter to Sir Charles Lyell, to obtain Mr. Wallace's consent to 

 allow the Essay to be published as soon as possible. Of this 

 step we highly approved, provided Mr. Darwin did not with- 

 hold from the public, as he was strongly inclined to do (in 

 favour of Mr. Wallace), the memoir which he had himself 

 written on the same subject, and which, as before stated, one 

 of us had perused in 1844, and the contents of which we had 



* My friend Mr. J. J. Walker, E.N., tells me that the house in 

 which Wallace lived in Ternate, and in which the essay was written, 

 is still pointed out by the natives as one of the features of the place. 

 It is, unfortunately, much dilapidated. 



