IV 



INTRODUCTION. 



resisted, he proposed to Mr. Bates a joint expedition to the 

 Amazons, one of the objects, in addition to the collection of 

 natural history specimens, being to gather facts, as Mr. Wallace 

 expressed it in one of his letters to Mr. Bates, " towards solving 

 the problem of the origin of species," a subject on which they 

 had already conversed and corresponded extensively. The 

 two friends met in London early in 1848 to study the collec- 

 tions of South American animals and plants already there; 

 and they embarked at Liverpool in a small trading vessel on 

 the 20th of April, 1848, reaching the mouth of the Amazons 

 just a month later. From this date the present volume speaks 

 for itself. We will merely note that Mr. Bates took a different 

 route of exploration from Mr. Wallace from March 1850; he 

 remained seven years longer in the country, and in 1863 pub- 

 lished his most attractive " Naturalist on the Amazons.'' 



Mr. Wallace's travels on the Rio Negro and to the upper 

 waters of the Orinoco, his adventurous ascent of the rapid river 

 Uaupes, his observations on the natural history and the native 

 tribes of the Amazon valley, are simply and naturally recorded 

 in this volume. His assemblage of facts will be seen to form 

 a broad basis for induction as to causes and modes of trans- 

 formation of species. His return voyage bade fair to be his 

 last, for the vessel in which he sailed took fire, and v/as com- 

 pletely destroyed, with a large proportion of Mr. Wallace's 

 live animals and valuable specimens. Ten anxious days had 

 to be spent in boats, tortured not only by shortness of food 

 but by remembrances of the dangers encountered in obtaining 

 valued specimens, now irretrievably lost. It was only after an 

 eighty days' voyage that Mr. Wallace landed at Deal on the 

 i8th of October, 1852. His " Travels on the Amazon and Rio 

 Negro," pubHshed in the autumn of 1853, had an excellent 

 reception, and after disposing of the collections which had 

 been sent home previous to his return Mr. Wallace started for 

 another tropical region, the Malay archipelago. 



From July 1854, when he arrived in Singapore, to the early 

 part of 1862, Mr. Wallace travelled many thousand miles, 

 mostly in regions little explored before, especially for natural 

 history purposes. Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Timor, Celebes, the 

 Moluccas, the Aru and Ke Islands, and even New Guinea were 

 visited, some more than once, and long sojourns were made in 

 the most interesting regions. Even those who have read his 



