HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 21 



coasts of South America, and the voyage round the 

 world being completed by way of New Zealand, 

 Australia, Mauritius, St. Helena, and Brazil, and 

 then by the Cape Verde Islands to England. The 

 remainder of his life was devoted to work in 

 England, work of extraordinary amount and most 

 varied character. By this work he slowly accumu- 

 lated facts, and especially the conditions under which 

 the breeds of domesticated animals and cultivated 

 plants come into existence, and are propagated or 

 modified. I propose to consider more in detail the 

 history of Darwin's life in the last lecture. 



Alfred Russel Wallace was born in Mon- 

 mouthshire in 1823. As a boy he was an eager 

 naturalist. From 1844 to 1845 he was English 

 master at the Collegiate School at Leicester, and 

 while there made the acquaintance of Mr. H. W. 

 Bates, an ardent entomologist. A few years later 

 the desire to visit tropical countries became too 

 strong to resist, and a joint expedition took place 

 to collect Natural History objects, and to "gather 

 facts towards solving the problem of the Origin of 

 Species." In 1848 he started to the mouth of the 

 Amazon, and worked with Bates till 1850, when 

 Wallace moved to Rio Negro, finally returning in 

 October 1852. His vessel was destroyed by fire, 

 and he spent ten days in an open boat on the sea 

 in the mid- Atlantic. From 1854 to 1862 he spent 

 his time in the Malay Archipelago, where animal 

 life was most luxuriant and least affected by man. 

 In June 1858 Darwin received from Wallace the 

 MS. of a paper " On the Tendency of Varieties 



