EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 277 
ways of Nature in the open—that the doctrine of natural selection 
especially appealed, and therein lay its great and lasting strength. 
Dr. Wallace, who was very cordially received on rising to re- 
spond, said that since the death of Darwin in 1882 he had found 
himself in the somewhat unusual position of receiving credit and 
praise from popular writers under a complete misapprehension of 
what his share in Darwin’s work really amounted to. It had been 
stated not infrequently in the Press that Darwin and he discovered 
natural selection simultaneously, while a more daring few had declared 
that he was the first to make the discovery, and that he gave way to 
Darwin. To avoid further errors it would be well to give the actual 
facts. The one fact that connected him with Darwin was that the 
idea of ‘‘natural selection ”’ or ‘survival of the fittest,” together with 
its far-reaching consequences, occurred to them both independently. 
But what was often forgotten was that the idea occurred to Darwin 
in October, 1838, nearly twenty years earlier than to himself, and 
that during the whole of that twenty years Darwin had been labori- 
ously collecting evidence and carrying out ingenious experiments and 
original observations. As far back as 1844, when he (Dr. Wallace) 
had hardly thought of any serious study of nature, Darwin had 
written an outline of his views which he communicated to his friends 
Lyell and Hooker. The former strongly urged him to publish his 
theory as soon as possible lest he should be forestalled, but Darwin 
always refused till he had got together the whole of the materials for 
his intended great work. Then at last Lyell’s prediction was fulfilled, 
and without any apparent warning his (Dr. Wallace’s) letter reached 
Darwin like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. How different from 
this long study and preparation, this philosophic caution, this deter- 
mination not to make known his fruitful conception till he could back 
it up by overwhelming proofs, was his own conduct! The idea came 
to him, as it came to Darwin, in a sudden flash of insight. It was 
thought out in a few hours, and was written down with such a sketch 
of its various applications and developments as occurred to the mind 
at the moment. Then it was copied on to letter paper and sent on to 
Darwin, all in one week. He was the young man in a hurry; Darwin 
was the painstaking and patient student. Such being the facts, he 
should have had no cause of complaint if the respective shares of 
Darwin and himself had thenceforth been estimated as roughly pro- 
portional to the time that each had bestowed upon their theory when 
it was first given to the world—that was to say, as twenty years was 
to one week. If Darwin had listened to his friends and had pub- 
lished his theory after ten years, fifteen years, or even eighteen years’ 
elaboration of it, he would at once have been recognized, and should 
ever be recognized, as the sole and undisputed discoverer and patient 
investigator of the great law of ‘natural selection” in all its far- 
reaching consequences. It was a singular piece of good luck that 
gave him any share whatever in the discovery. During the first half 
of the nineteenth century many great biological thinkers and workers 
had been pondering over the problem, and had even suggested in- 
genious but inadequate solutions. Why did so many of the greatest 
