ALFRED BUSSEL WALLACE 527 



and in the tropics, out of which have come the sudden illuminations or 

 flashes of light leading to the solution of the problems before him. As 

 to this wonderful mechanism of induction, Wallace observes : 



1 have long since come to see that no one deserves either praise or blame 

 for the ideas that come to him, but only for the actions resulting therefrom. 

 Ideas and beliefs are certainly not voluntary acts. They come to us — we hardly 

 know how or whence, and once they have got possession of us we can not reject 

 or change them at will. 



Apart from Darwin's education in Christ's College, Cambridge, as 

 compared with Wallace's self-education, the parallel between his intel- 

 lectual tendencies and environment and those of Charles Darwin is 

 extraordinary. The} r enjoyed a similar current of influence from men, 

 from books and from nature. Thus the next turning point in his life 

 was his meeting with Henry Walter Bates, through whom he acquired 

 his zest for the wonders of insect life, which opened for the first time for 

 him the zoological windows of nature. In a measure Bates was to 

 Wallace what the Rev. John S. Henslow had been to Darwin. It is note- 

 worthy that the greater and most original part of his direct observations 

 of nature were upon the adaptations of insects. 



Darwin and Wallace fell under the spell of the same books, first and 

 foremost those of Lyell, as noted above, then of Humboldt in his " Per- 

 sonal Narrative" (1814—18), of Robert Chambers in his "Vestiges of 

 the Natural History of Creation" (1844), of Malthus in his "Essay on 

 the Principle of Population" (1798). 



It was, however, Darwin's own "Journal of Researches," published 

 in 1845, and read by Wallace at the age of twenty- three, which deter- 

 mined him to invite Bates to accompany him on his journey to the 

 Amazon and Rio Negro, which filled the four years 1848—52. In this 

 wondrous equatorial expanse, like Darwin he was profoundly impressed 

 with the forests, the butterflies and birds, and with his first meeting with 

 man in an absolute state of nature. Bates, himself a naturalist of high 

 order, 2 was closely observing the mimetic resemblances among insects 

 to animate and inanimate objects and introducing Wallace to a field 

 which he subsequently made his own. Bates remained several years 

 after Wallace's departure, and published his classical memoir on mimicry 

 in 1860-61. Wallace's own description of his South American experi- 

 ences entitled " Narrative of Travels on the Amazon," published in 1853 

 when he was thirty years of age, does not display the ability of his later 

 writings, and shows that his powers were slowly developing. 



His eight years of travel between 1854 and 1862 in the Indo-Malay 

 Islands, the Timor Group, Celebes, the Moluccas and the Papuan Group 

 brought his powers to full maturity. It is apparent that his prolonged 

 observations on the natives, the forests, the birds and mammals, and 



2 See his principal work, entitled ' ' Naturalist on the River Amazons, ' ' 2 

 vols., 8vo, John Murray, London. 1863. 



