January, 1914.] THE ORCHID REVIEW. 5 
Rises OBITUARY. | Ra 
R. ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE, O.M., F.R.S.—A great naturalist of the 
Victorian era, whose name is indissolubly linked with that of Charles 
Darwin in the discovery of the great law of natural selection, passed away 
at his residence, Broadstone, near Bournemouth, on Friday, November 7th, 
in his g1st year. On July rst, 1858, a joint paper by Charles Darwin and 
Alfred Russell Wallace was read at a meeting of the Linnean Society, 
entitled, ‘‘On the tendency of Species to form Varieties, and on the 
Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.” 
That paper has revolutionised every branch of Natural History. The 
circumstances were briefly asfollows. In the previous February, Wallace 
wrote, from Ternate, a long letter to Darwin explaining views which had 
suddenly occurred to him when lying ill with intermittent fever, and which 
he summarised in a final phrase as follows :— 
There is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of 
varieties further and further from the original type—a progression to which there 
appears no reason to assign any definite limits. This progression, by minute 
steps, in various directions, but always checked and balanced by the necessary 
conditions, subject to which alone existence can be preserved, may, it is believed, be 
followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena presented by organised beings, 
their extinction and succession in. past ages, and all the extraordinary modifications 
of form, instinct, and habits which they exhibit. 
This letter came as a “ bolt from the blue,” for Darwin had long been 
preparing a work on the origin of species, as the result of observations 
made during the voyage of the “‘ Beagle.” This was known to Sir Charles 
Lyell and Dr. Hooker, and Darwin was now urged to publish an extract. 
To this he acceded, remarking, ‘‘ I have more especially been induced to 
do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the 
Malayan Archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same conclusions 
that I have on the origin of species.” To both these great naturalists the 
idea came as the result of observations on the character and distribution of 
wild life within the tropics. 
Wallace spent four years, from 1848 to 1852, in South America, in 
company with the naturalist Bates, and on his return he published an 
entertaining Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. The work 
contains little about Orchids, though the following extract shows how they 
The locality was Rio Jeronymo, on the Rio 
came under his observant eye. 
Negro, and he remarks :— 
In a little patch of open bushy campo, which occurs about a mile from the village, 
I was delighted to find abundance of Orchids. I had never seen so many collected 
in one place ; it was a complete natural Orchid-house. In an hour’s ramble I noticed 
