134 Obituary. 



afterwards as a teaclicr in a school at Leicester. During 

 these early days he showed a marked taste for natural 

 history^ and especially for botany. About 1844 he became 

 acquainted with H. W. Bates, and they formed a plan to 

 make an expedition together to South America^ in order to 

 form natural history collections, by the sale of portions of 

 which they hoped to recoup themselves for the expenses of 

 the journey. 



Finally they embarked from Liverpool, in 1848, for the 

 Amazon. After working for a year or so together they 

 separated, Wallace exploring the Rio Negro, one of the 

 principal tributaries of the Amazon, while Bates devoted 

 himself to the main river. Wallace returned in 1852, but 

 was unfortunate enough to lose the greater portion of his 

 collections and notes owing to the ship in which he was 

 returning taking fire. In the following year he published 

 an account of his journey, ' Travels on the Amazon and Rio 

 Negro,^ as well as a volume on ' The Palm Trees of the 

 Amazon.' 



In 1854, having disposed of such specimens as he had 

 saved, he started off for the Malay Archipelago, where 

 he remained for eight years, collecting and exploring, 

 and visiting most of the islands from Sumatra to New 

 Guinea. The collections he brought back numbered over 

 125,000 specimens, including some 8000 bird-skins, most of 

 which are now in the British Museum. It was during this 

 period, while living at Ternate in the Moluccas, and while 

 he lay suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, 

 that the idea of Natural Selection occurred to him, and 

 three days later he had written out an outline of his theory 

 and posted it to Darwin. 



Among other results of his investigations in the east was 

 his discovery of a distinct break in the faunal continuity 

 between Asia and Australia in the narrow strait dividing 

 the two small islands of Bali and Lombok, the former being 

 Asiatic in its affinities, the latter Australian. This line has 

 since come to be known as W^allace's line, and his first 



