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Alfred Russel Wallace ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE By MARTIN FICHMAN1 /?y-/» Glendon College, York University, Toronto TWAYNE PUBLISHERS A DIVISION OF G. K. HALL & CO., BOSTON 1981 Contents About the Author Preface Chronology 1. Introduction 15 2. Natural Selection 29 3. Biogeography 60 4. Human Evolution 99 5. Social and Political Concerns 122 6. Conclusion 159 Notes and References 163 Selected Bibliography 174 Index 183 Alfred Russel Wallace About the Author Bom in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, Martin Fichman received the B.Sc. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of New York and the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and is currently associate professor of History and Natural Science at York University (Glendon College), Toronto. He has pub¬ lished articles on Alfred Russel Wallace and on the history of chemistry and is a contributor to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. He is presently working on a study of the inter¬ relation between biological and sociopolitical ideas in the writings of late nineteenth-century evolutionists. Preface Alfred Russel Wallace was among the most brilliant Victorian naturalists and codiscoverer of one of the principal scientific achievements of the nineteenth century, the theory of natural selection. Although his accomplishments were fully recognized by his contemporaries, his reputation diminished somewhat in this century. Paradoxically, this situation has arisen partly through Wallace’s persistent efforts to equate evolution by natural selection with the name of Charles Darwin in the public mind. I have, therefore, critically analyzed Wallace’s major theoretical advances in order to clarify his central role in the history of evolutionary biology. Given the multiplicity of his scientific inter¬ ests, I have focused on one aspect—his biogeographical system— which best exemplifies the broad power of his evolutionary syn¬ thesis. This has necessitated, in a study of this length, omitting detailed treatments of certain other facets of Wallace’s biology, notably his views on the causes and extent of variation, the mode of inheritance, interspecific sterility, instincts, and botanical issues generally. I have as a parallel aim the analysis of the interrelation be¬ tween Wallace’s biological and sociopolitical ideas. The common cultural, philosophical, and linguistic context of scientific and so-called extrascientific factors in the Victorian evolutionary debates is now recognized as indisputable. No leading biologist was more explicit—and perhaps more vulnerable—than Wallace in the attempt to integrate the methodology and conclusions of the natural sciences with social, political, and moral concerns. In assessing his efforts to forge a comprehensive philosophy of man and nature, I have emphasized Wallace’s commitment to land nationalization and to socialism, as these have received less attention than his debt to spiritualism. I am grateful to my friend Frederick Kirchhoff for his criti¬ cism and advice in the preparation of this text. Alan Richardson ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE provided a number of excellent suggestions for Chapter 3. I am also indebted to the librarians of the Linnean Society of London and of the archives of the Imperial College of Science and Technology for their assistance. Finally, I must thank Karen Woodvine for the speed, accuracy, and cheer with which she typed the manuscript for this book. Portions of Chapter 3 appeared in the Journal of the History of Biology (10 [Spring 1977]: 45-63). Martin Fichman Glendon College, York University, Toronto Chronology 1823 Birth of Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January), son of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell, at Usk, Monmouthshire. 1828 Family moves to Hertford. 1836 Leaves Hertford Grammar School. 1837 Sent to London to live with his brother John (apprenticed to a master builder). Associates with London secularists and is introduced to Owenite social and political philos¬ ophy. Sent next to learn surveying with his brother Wil¬ liam in Bedfordshire. 1843 Death of Thomas Vere Wallace (April). 1844 Gains teaching post at Leicester Collegiate School. Meets Henry Walter Bates, who introduces him to entomology. Reads Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population. First acquaintance with phrenology and mesmerism. 1845 Death of brother William in Neath. Takes over his sur¬ veying business and has first modest financial success. 1848 Leaves for South American expedition with Bates (26 April). 1852 Returns to London. Meets T. H. Huxley. 1853 Palm Trees of the Amazon and A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. Visits Switzerland. 1854 Meets Charles Darwin. 1854- Leaves England (March 1854) for Singapore and corn- 1862 mencement of eight years of travel and exploration in the Malay Archipelago. 1855 “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” (his first explicit public statement of the doctrine of evolution). 1858 Writes (February) “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type” (Wallace’s discovery of the principle of natural selection). Paper ALFRED RUSS EL WALLACE read (1 July)—jointly with an extract from Darwins unpublished manuscript on natural selection—before the Linnean Society of London. 1862 Returns to London. Visits Herbert Spencer. Associates with Charles Lyell. 1864 “The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of ‘Natural Selection’” (Wal¬ lace’s application of natural selection to man). 1866 “The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural.” Marries Annie Mitten. 1868 Awarded Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his “labours in practical and theoretical zoology.” 1869 The Malay Archipelago. 1870 Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. 1871 Presidential Address (January) to Entomological Society. 1872 Moves to Grays, Essex. 1874 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism. 1876 The Geographical Distribution of Animals. President of Biological Section of the Rritish Association for the Ad¬ vancement of Science. Moves to Dorking. 1878 Tropical Nature and Other Essays. Moves to Croydon. 1880 Island Life. 1881 Awarded Civil Service Pension in recognition of his work in science. Elected president of newly formed Land Na¬ tionalization Society. Moves to Godaiming. 1882 Land Nationalisation. Receives honorary LL.D. from the University of Dublin. 1885 Bad Times. 1886- Lecture tour of North America. 1887 1889 Darwinism. Receives honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford. Moves to Parkstone. 1890 “Human Selection,” declaring himself a Socialist. Awarded the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society. 1893 Election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. 1895 “The Method of Organic Evolution” (defending the theory of gradual variations against William Bateson’s theory of discontinuous variations). Botanizing tour in Switzerland. Chronology 1898 The Wonderful Century. 1900 Studies, Scientific and Social. 1902 Moves to Old Orchard, Broadstone. 1903 Mans Place in the Universe. 1905 My Life. 1908 Receives the Order of Merit. Awarded Copley Medal of the Royal Society and (first) Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnean Society of London. 1909 Delivers last public lecture on evolution at the Royal Institute (22 January). 1910 The World of Life. 1913 Social Environment and Moral Progress and The Revolt of Democracy. Dies (7 November) and is buried at Broad- stone, Dorset. 1915 Memorial plaque unveiled at Westminster Abbey (1 November). CHAPTER 1 Introduction I Early Years (1823-1848) ALFRED Russel Wallace was born in Usk, Monmouthshire, on 8 January 1823, the eighth child of Thomas Vere Wallace and Mary Anne Greenell. His father had earlier possessed a modest independent income, but a spasmodic business career and a series of ill-fated financial speculations had reduced the family fortunes to the point that the elder Wallace enjoyed “com¬ parative freedom from worry about money matters, because these had reached such a pitch that nothing worse was to be expected.”1 Despite the difficult economic circumstances, Alfred Wallace enjoyed a happy childhood in the picturesque Welsh vil¬ lage of his birth. The family moved to Hertford in 1828, where Wallace began his only formal education two years later. He regarded this ex¬ perience as practically worthless, except for his learning suf¬ ficient Latin to be able later to understand the names and de¬ scriptions of species. He also acquired enough French to read and converse easily in it. Far more important were the family’s home library and the collection of a proprietary town library of which Thomas Wallace had become librarian. These per¬ mitted the child to indulge his taste for extensive if eclectic reading by providing “almost any book that I had heard spoken of as celebrated or interesting” (ML, I, 75). Wallace’s older brother John, a mechanically gifted boy, taught him to make those gadgets and toys which the family’s straitened circum¬ stances rarely enabled them to purchase. Wallace thus early developed the technical skills which were to prove indispensable in his travels as a naturalist in South America and the Malay 15 16 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE Archipelago and which were always a source of health and en¬ joyable occupation to him. Having left Hertford Grammar School at Christmas 1836, Wallace was sent early in the next year to live in London, where John had become apprenticed to a master builder. Although he spent only a few months there, the period was an extremely significant one in his life. Aside from the obvious attractions of the capita], Wallace encountered advanced political and social ideas. He was taken regularly by his brother to evening meet¬ ings at a “Hall of Science”—Wallace termed it a “kind of club or mechanics’ institute for advanced thinkers among workmen” (ML, I, 87)—in Tottenham Court Road, where the followers of Robert Owen lectured. The principles of Owenite social and political philosophy, though hardly appreciated fully by the thirteen-year-old, were later to shape Wallace’s own reformist views. Whether these early working-class associations—a back¬ ground quite different from that of Darwin, Lyell, Hooker, and most other early Victorian “gentlemen-naturalists”—account for his later somewhat atypical position within the British profes¬ sional scientific community remains a moot question.
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