The Malay Archipelago

The Victorians, who knew nothing of genetics, greatly believed in heredity, and Charles Darwin was born, in 1809, into a family which offered considerable advantages along this line. Darwin's mother was Susannah Wedgwood, whose name is honored for its beautiful china still being produced today. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a well-known physician, and the son of Dr. Eramus Darwin, an early evolutionist, whose Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life treated the mutability of species, environmental adaptation, sexual selection, etc. One could then afford to ignore these theories, for Erasmus could not explain how adaptation was brought about; after a generation's wait his grandson would tender the explanation and half the world was to rise up in praise or righteous anger. Alfred Russel Wallace had not quite the same luck. His birth in 1823 was to a respectable but unremarkable family of no great intellectual achievement, and equally little income. He left school at the age of 14 (which did not disqualify him from becoming a school teacher at 21) and worked with his brother as a surveyor. Working outdoors all day, he developed a passionate interest in botany. Fate intervened by introducing him to the young entomologist H. W. Bates, now honored as the discoverer of protective mimicry, but then under his father's employ in the hosiery business. Gradually, the two young men formed the plan of going to the Amazon. Bates spent eleven years exploring this region, then almost completely unknown, and Wallace, four years. Their experiences are recorded in Wallace's Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, and Bates' The Naturalist on the River Amazons. In 1854, two years after returning from South America, Wallace set off again, this time for Singapore as the first stop in a collecting trip which was to last eight years and take him all over the Malay Archipelago. During this time he traveled approximately 14,000 miles, frequently in native praus (during which voyages he avoided tedium by being variously storm-tossed, becalmed, besieged by pirates, deserted by his crew, ill, half-starved-in short, he was lucky enough to experience almost everything which makes journals of travel such pleasurable and exciting reading), and collected over 125,000 specimens. When we consider that Wallace spent, quite literally, months at a time ill and unable to work because of abscesses, agues, fevers, and ulcers of a truly tropical variety and grandeur; when we realize that every specimen had to be packed and, if it were a bird or mammal, painstakingly skinned and preserved, then we can appreciate this truly Herculean feat. In addition, as behooved a curious British traveler, Wallace collected vocabularies in 57 native languages, many of which were completely unknown (unfortunately 25 of these were lost by an acquaintance to whom they were lent), found out as much as he could of native beliefs