138 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



and climatic conditions from the Lower Amazons, it 

 flows tiirough a " vast plain about a thousand miles 

 in length, and five hundred or six hundred miles in 

 breadth covered with one uniform, lofty, impervious, 

 and humid forest." Bates stayed in the country till 

 June, 1859, but Wallace left in 1852, and in the 

 following year published an account of his journey 

 under the title of Travels on the Amazon and Rio 

 Negro. That book was written under the serious 

 disadvantage of the destruction of the greater part 

 of the notes and specimens by the burning of the 

 ship in which Mr. Wallace took passage on his home- 

 ward voyage. That it remains one of the select com- 

 pany of works of travel for which demand is continu- 

 ous is evidenced in a reprint which appeared in 1891. 

 If it affords few hints of the author's bent of mind 

 toward the question of the origin of species, it shows 

 what interest was being aroused within him over the 

 allied subject of the geographical distribution of 

 plants and animals which Mr. Wallace was to make 

 so markedly his own. 



In 1854 he sailed for the Malay^Atchipelago, 

 where nearly eight years were spent in exploring the 

 region from Sumatra to New Guinea. The large 

 and varied outcome of that labour was embodied in 

 numerous papers communicated to learned societies 

 and scientific journals, and in a series of delightful 

 books from The Malay Archipelago, first published 

 in 1869, to Island Life, published in 1880. Among 

 the minor results of his extensive travels — for all 



