134 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



certain competent men from whom an editor might 

 be chosen, preference being given to Sir Charles 

 (then Mr. Lyell, at whose advice Darwin began to 

 write out his views on a scale three or four times as 

 extensive as that in which they appeared in the 

 Origin of Species. Their publication in an abstract 

 form was hastened by the receipt, in June, 1858, of 

 a paper, containing " exactly the same theory," from 

 Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace at Ternate in the 

 Moluccas. This reference to that distinguished ex- 

 plorer, will, before the story of the coincident dis- 

 covery is further told, fitly introduce a sketch of his 

 career. 



Alfred Russel Wallace was born at Usk, in 

 Monmouthshire, on the 8th of January, 1823. He was 

 educated at Hereford Grammar School, and in his 

 fourteenth year began the study of land-surveying 

 and architecture under an elder brother. Quick- 

 witted and observing, he studied a great deal more 

 on his own account in his journeyings over England 

 and Wales, the results of which abide in the wide 

 range of subjects — scientific, political, and social — 

 engaging his active pen from early manhood to the 

 present day. 



About 1844 he exchanged the theodolite for the 

 ferule, and became English master in the Collegiate 

 School at Leicester, in which town he found a con- 

 genial friend in the person of his future fellow-trav- 

 eller, Henry Walter Bates. Bates was then employed 

 in his father's hosiery warehouse, from which he 



