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Home , The Malay Archipelago

Species seeker extraordinaire

Darwin’s inspiration for the theory of came from a single voyage. Across the globe, , one of the world’s greatest species seekers, travelled a different path. In the year of the centenary of Wallace’s death, writer Richard Conniff traces his history.

’m afraid the ship’s on fire. Come and slid down into a boat that was ‘rising and see what you think of it,’ the captain falling and swaying about with the swell of said. It was after breakfast, 6 August the ocean’. 1852, and the writer recounting this awful moment was Alfred Russel LOST AT SEA ‘IWallace. He was the only passenger on the The extent of his loss did not dawn on him 235-tonne brig Helen, aflame, in the middle of until they were finally rescued, seven days later, the Atlantic. Wallace wandered numbly down by a ship bound for London from Cuba. to his cabin, through the suffocating smoke Wallace now felt secure enough to reflect and heat, to retrieve a single tin box with a on his loss: ‘How many times, when almost few notebooks and drawings from his travels. overcome by the ague [malaria], had I crawled He left behind three years of journals and a into the forest and been rewarded by some large folio of drawings and notes. In the hold unknown and beautiful species! How many of the ship were boxes and boxes of species places, which no European foot but my own never seen outside the Amazon. He had had trodden, would have been recalled to my gathered it all by means of long, difficult travel, memory by the rare and insects they complicated by malaria, yellow fever, dysentery had furnished to my collection! How many and other hardships. He was still recovering weary days and weeks had I passed, upheld from a bout of fever as the ship burned, and only by the fond hope of bringing home many he felt ‘a kind of apathy about saving anything’. new and beautiful forms from those wild When the time came, Wallace went over the regions... And now everything was gone.’ stern on a rope, tearing up his hands as he It was as if Darwin’s Beagle had sunk with all

26 his Galapagos treasures still unmined for Wallace biographer Peter Raby. Edward This page Wallace’s flying frog Rhacophorus scientific insights. But ‘I tried to think as Newman, the president of the Entomological nigropalmatus. Conventional naturalists still little as possible about what might have Society, had to admonish members in 1854 Photographed in been’, Wallace later wrote, ‘and to occupy for their snobberies. the Danum Valley Conservation Area, Sabah, mostly treated new species as the myself with the state of things which Malaysian . actually existed’. ASKING QUESTIONS Next page A tray of

Arriving back in England that October, after Wallace was thinking far more deeply about LibraryPhoto Stammers/Science Sinclair © butterflies collected by result of separate and seemingly Alfred Russel Wallace almost three months at sea, including a week species than the experts and connoisseurs during his expedition in in an open lifeboat, Wallace was tattered, who bought his specimens. Though he was the . random acts of creation by God unwashed, thin – and jubilant. ‘Oh glorious careful not to say so out loud, he was still day!’ he cried, going ashore at Deal in Kent. focused on testing the idea, put forward ‘Oh beef-steaks and damson-tart, a paradise by an anonymous writer in an 1845 book, for hungry sinners’. In London, his agent Vestiges of the of Creation, Samuel Stevens got him a new suit of clothes that natural laws could drive evolutionary and had his own mother feed him back to change. Such a law was already forming in health at the family home. Stevens had taken his mind, and he might well have come to the precaution of insuring all shipments from it, and to the idea of , far his collectors. So Wallace at least had the more rapidly except for the loss of so much £200 insurance payout, small compensation valuable evidence. for his loss, but enough to live on for now. He cast about for ways to renew his Within days of his return, Wallace was attack on what he later called ‘the most already contemplating his next expedition. difficult and... interesting problem in the Over the next year, he also busied himself natural history of the earth’ – the origin of writing four scientific papers and two books, species. The Malay Archipelago, sweeping one a technical treatise on Amazonian palms, from to Papua , the other his A Narrative of Travels on the seemed to offer ‘the very finest field for Amazon and Rio Negro, cobbled together the exploring and collecting naturalist’ on from letters home and from memory. account of its ‘wonderful richness’ and relatively unexplored state. It bridged the RUFFLING FEATHERS gap between the very different fauna of He was, as he later put it, ‘the young man Asia and Australia, and its 17,500 islands in a hurry’, and it showed. At a meeting offered an almost infinite variety of habitats, of the Zoological Society of London in of all sizes, and all degrees of isolation. December 1852, just two months after his Wallace needed, as he later explained to return, Wallace gave his fellow naturalists a his bewildered family, to ‘visit and explore cordial earful. He had found to his dismay the largest number of islands possible and that the labels in museums and in natural collect animals from the greatest number history books seldom recorded more than of localities in order to arrive at any definite the vaguest hint of where a specimen came results’ about the of species. from: ‘Brazil’, ‘Peru’, even ‘S. America’. By the start of 1855, Wallace was holed up Conventional naturalists still mostly treated during the monsoon in a small house at the new species as the result of separate and mouth of the River, just opposite the seemingly random acts of creation by God. blue mass of Santubong Mountain, on the But Wallace was seeing connections and north coast of Borneo. asking what they signified. Why did clusters His books had arrived belatedly by the of similar species all occur within a single long route around Africa, and now he took small area? Why did species often vary time to consult them and brood over his only slightly from one island to the next? findings about the puzzling distribution of Wallace felt that these questions could hummingbirds, toucans, monkeys and other not be satisfactorily answered until the species in the Amazon. The resulting article exact geographical limits of a species were in that September’s Annals and Magazine of accurately determined. Natural History proposed a simple law: ‘Every This idea that they’d been going about species has come into existence coincident their business in the wrong way irritated both in space and time with a pre-existing other naturalists, not least because it came closely allied species’. They hadn’t just dropped from a field collector who earned his wages down from heaven. like a shoemaker on a piece-rate basis. Wallace titled his article On the Law ‘The professional experts in the museums Which Has Regulated the Introduction of of London, and the connoisseurs of the New Species. A knack for compelling titles rectories and country houses’ did not even clearly eluded him. But the text struck an want to allow the likes of Bates and Wallace unmistakable note of urgency: ‘Hitherto into their learned societies, according to no attempt has been made to explain >

28 evolve issue 15 29 in important circles. , Darwin’s But reading and rereading Principles in the and, no small thing, a member of his own friend and mentor, took Wallace seriously field, Wallace thought that the slow power of social class. He grew more alarmed later that enough to open his own series of notebooks natural forces could produce major changes, month, when Darwin convened a gathering on the species question. not just in geological phenomena but also in at Down House where he subtly lobbied for Lyell had long espoused the Creationist living plants and animals, even leading to the the evolutionary cause with his guests, the dogma that all species were adapted from origin of new species. It bothered Wallace biologist and writer T H Huxley, the botanist the start to the places of their origin and did that Lyell did not also see it. Joseph Hooker, and entomologist T Vernon not change significantly thereafter. But his The reliance on ‘special creations’ set Wollaston, who had just published a book on anti-evolutionary convictions were beginning Wallace off on a transmutationist tear variation in species. to waver. His first notebook entry, two days in his journal: ‘In a small group of islands But Lyell also could not help seeing that after reading the Wallace article, disputed not very distant from the mainland, like Darwin’s ‘species-making’ mechanism – the idea that limb rudiments in a snake-like the Galapagos, we find animals and plants natural selection – might actually make were evidence for its evolution from different from those of any other country sense. So despite his own lingering anti- a quadruped ancestor. ‘Arguments against but resembling those of the nearest land. evolutionary beliefs, he did the right thing as such variability of species are too powerful’, If they are special creations why should they a scholar and friend, urging Darwin to publish he wrote – and seemed almost to add, resemble those of the nearest land? Does at least ‘some small fragment of your data… ‘Aren’t they?’ Wallace meanwhile was jotting not that fact point to an origin from that and so out with the theory and let it take notes to himself about how just such limb land’. It was just a quick note to himself, date – and be cited – and understood’. rudiments in whales revealed their descent jotted down too fast for proper punctuation. If Darwin didn’t strike now, somebody from quadruped , not fish. For the But it wasn’t really a question, anyway. else would. next few months, at a distance of 12,800 By now, Wallace and Darwin were also kilometres, Lyell and Wallace harrowed each MAKING WAVES corresponding. Through his agent, Wallace other’s thoughts. From one island to the next, Wallace’s sent Darwin poultry specimens from and The two men inhabited distinctly different thoughts came back to Lyell, often in a spirit . Darwin replied in May 1857 with worlds, and not just geographically. Lyell of contention. The geologist’s talk of the encouragement, cautiously praising Wallace’s had ‘a Lord Chancellor Manner’ according to ‘balance of species’ pushed Wallace to the paper on the introduction of species, ‘I can one acquaintance. He was also ‘clubbable brink. ‘This phrase is utterly without meaning’, plainly see that we have thought much alike and cultured; a friend to peers and Prime he began. ‘Some species are very rare and and to a certain extent have come to similar Ministers’, according to Darwin biographer others very abundant. Where is the balance?’ conclusions… I agree to the truth of almost Adrian Desmond. ‘He was a lawyer by And then the key phrase (italics added), ‘To every word of your paper’. But he also gently training and a gentleman by status: he human apprehension this is no balance but warned Wallace off: ‘This summer will make lived on his capital and made geology his a struggle in which one often exterminates the 20th year (!) since I opened my first vocation’. Wallace meanwhile was a friend another’. In his state of high critical dudgeon, notebook on the species question’, he wrote, to funny old men in remote villages and, of Wallace seemed to miss, for the moment, the adding that it might take him another two course, still a glorified manual labourer who full import of his own words. What he was years to go to press. lived by catching butterflies. describing was natural selection. But Lyell’s 1,200-page For almost 20 years, Darwin had managed IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH was a continuing influence. With lawyerly to conceal the full extent of his evolutionary Early in the new year, at the other end of precision, it made the case that natural thinking from Lyell, the top anti-evolutionary the earth, Wallace’s travels took him to a rather than miraculous forces had caused voice of his generation. But during a visit ramshackle hut with a leaky roof on the coast the raising of seabeds, delving of canyons in April 1856 the shocking truth came of a mountainous island he called Gilolo, and upthrusting of mountains. Lyell thought out, Darwin believed in the almost infinite now known as , just west of Papua these singular phenomena, or to show how he used the unfamiliar word ‘antitype’. This for instance, Wallace recorded the moment geologic changes had occurred gradually, possibility of species to vary and evolve, New Guinea. He seems to have passed much they have arisen. Why are the genera vocabulary obscured his logical conclusion, of discovery: ‘I trembled with excitement as from forces still operating in the modern by natural or artificial selection. Lyell of the trip prostrate, wrapped in blankets of Palms and of Orchids in almost every that allied species occur close together I saw it come majestically toward me and world. He debunked ’s was alarmed. This wasn’t some dubious against the hot and cold fits of malaria. case confined to one hemisphere? Why because one species has evolved from could hardly believe I had really obtained it romantic vision of an Earth alternating continental like Lamarck. Darwin was a Sickness made him think, if only by forcing are the closely allied species of brown- another. Wallace also neglected to propose till I had taken it out of my net and gazed between epochs of catastrophic upheaval cautious and highly regarded naturalist, a pause in his restless collecting. backed Trogons all found in the East, and a mechanism for how this kind of evolution upon its gorgeous wings of velvety black and (when waves of extinction swept across the green-backed in the West? Why are could occur. So even Darwin missed the point brilliant green, its golden body and crimson the planet) and periods of relative calm the Macaws and the Cockatoos similarly when he read the article, scribbling ‘nothing breast. It was six and a half inches across its (when new species sprang up). In contrast restricted? Insects furnish a countless very new’ and ‘it seems all creation with him’. expanded wings and I have certainly never to this catastrophist world view, Lyell’s ‘I trembled with excitement as number of analogous examples... and in all, Wallace recorded both his developing seen a more gorgeous insect.’ Wallace thought uniformitarians saw a steadier, slower the most closely allied species [are] found in theories and his field notes in a journal now he had discovered a new species and named it process of change, with the past not all geographical proximity. The question forces kept at the Linnean Society in London. The Ornithoptera poseidon. ‘I had almost by heart that different from the present, give or I saw it come majestically towards itself upon every thinking mind – why are cardboard covers, quarter-bound with faded the characters of all the known species’, he take a few extinctions. But catastrophists these things so?’ old leather, are falling apart and many of wrote, ‘and I thought I could not be deceived and uniformitarians alike believed that new me and could hardly believe I had the pages are loose and have brittle, broken in pronouncing this to be a new one’. species, and particularly human beings, were NATURAL WONDER edges. But the greatest field collector of the the result of ‘special creations’ by God, and really obtained it till I had taken it Wallace avoided the of evolution. nineteenth century still lives between the WORLDS APART also mostly permanent in character. Instead of saying new species had ‘evolved’ he lines. Capturing an Ornithoptera, ‘the largest, Though Wallace thought it had sunk without Lyell had devoted the second volume of out of my net…’ said ‘created’ and instead of connecting them the most perfect, and the most beautiful of notice, his 1855 paper the Introduction of his Principles to refuting the evolutionary to an ‘ancestral species’ or ‘common ancestor’ butterflies’ in the Aru Islands near New Guinea, New Species had in fact stirred up interest thinking of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

30 evolve issue 15 evolve issue 15 31 This page Red of paradise Paradisaea rubra collected by Wallace. Plate In his state of high 31 from John Gould’s The Birds of New Guinea, Vol. 1 (1875–1888). Hand- critical dudgeon, coloured lithograph. Specimen drawer of golden birdwing butterflies Wallace seemed , collected by Wallace. Next page to miss, for the A map from The Malay Archipelago (1874) by Alfred Russel Wallace. moment, the full import of his own words. What he was describing was natural selection

As he lay there he mulled over the species GREAT MINDS ALIKE form of a species extinct and enable some ‘to present the theory to the world with such April 1856. The letter ended by emphasising question and, one day, the same book that Wallace may simply have been too distracted modified offshoot to ‘rapidly increase in a body of systematised facts and arguments Darwin’s ‘years of reflection’, incidentally had inspired Darwin came to mind – by his species seeking to think about the numbers and occupy the place of the extinct as would almost compel conviction’. reducing Wallace to ‘his able correspondent’. The Species Seekers T R Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of manuscript more strategically. Upon his species and variety’. Instead of publishing his essay outright, The reading took place in a narrow, Population. ‘It occurred to me to ask the return to , he immediately became Wallace devoted a lengthy section of his Wallace had merely sent a letter from stuffy ballroom at Burlington House, just question, why do some die and some live,’ caught up in plans for ‘my four-month essay to showing how his theory differed from one naturalist to another. And on those off Piccadilly Circus. An audience of about The Species Seekers is published by he later recalled. Thinking about how the campaign’ in New Guinea. By the end of Lamarckian evolution – it wasn’t about giraffes grounds, Darwin had fair claim to priority. 30 men heard an excerpt from Darwin’s W W Norton and is available priced healthiest individuals survive disease, and the March Wallace was off exploring ‘those dark getting longer necks because they ‘desired’ On 5 September 1857, six months before 1844 manuscript, then an abstract from £12.99 in paperback. strongest or swiftest escape from predators, forests’ of New Guinea that had given birth to reach higher vegetation. On the contrary, Wallace sent his letter, Darwin had outlined his letter to and finally Wallace’s ‘it suddenly flashed upon me… in every ‘to the most extraordinary and the most individual giraffes with somewhat longer his theory in a letter to American botanist essay. Neither author was present. Darwin evolve readers can claim a 30 per cent generation the inferior would inevitably be beautiful of the feathered inhabitants of the necks simply got favoured over time because Asa Gray. His wording foreshadowed had buried his son that day. Wallace was discount by quoting reference WN228, killed off and the superior would remain – Earth, the birds of paradise’. they could secure ‘a fresh range of pasture Wallace’s almost point for point: ‘I cannot hunting for bird of paradise specimens in either at the checkout on the Norton that is, the fittest would survive’. One morning a few months later, in mid- over the same ground as their shorter-necked doubt that during millions of generations New Guinea. Darwin himself later expressed UK website www.wwnorton.co.uk/ Over the next three days, literally in a June 1858, wandered out of companions, and on the first scarcity of food individuals of a species will be born with surprise at the order of the presentation, book.html?id=2607, in an email to fever, he wrote out the idea. On 9 March, his study to leaf through the mail on the hall were thereby enabled to outlive them’. It was, some slight variation profitable to some having thought that the Lyell-Hooker letter [email protected] (please do 1858, back on the volcanic island of table. A fat envelope awaited his attention, in a nutshell, natural selection. part of its economy… this variation… will and his own letter to Asa Gray ‘were to be not send credit card details by email) or by Ternate, the commercial centre for containing Wallace’s 20-page handwritten Darwin had long recognised that someone be slowly increased by the accumulative only an appendix to Wallace’s paper’. He had telephone on 01243 843291. Offer valid the region, he posted it to Darwin. manuscript, On the Tendency of Varieties to might beat him to the natural selection action of Natural selection; and the variety half-written a letter conceding all priority until 1 July 2013. It was arguably the greatest career Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type. jackpot and ‘fancied that I had grand enough thus formed will either coexist with, or to Wallace ‘and should certainly not have Terms and conditions miscalculation in the history of science. Darwin read it with dawning recognition – soul not to care’, he later wrote. But now more commonly will exterminate its parent changed it’ except for the manoeuvring by Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Wallace was clearly flattered to be treated and horror. he saw how mistaken he had been. ‘All my form’. In addition to this letter, Darwin had Lyell and Hooker. ‘I assure you I feel it and Allow 28 days for delivery. Offer subject to availability. as a colleague by the eminent Charles ‘The life of wild animals is a struggle originality, whatever it may amount to, will be also showed his 1844 manuscript on natural shall not forget it,’ he wrote to Hooker, with W W Norton can only provide refunds for damaged or Darwin. He could perhaps contemplate no for existence’, Wallace wrote, and ‘the smashed’, he lamented in a note to Lyell. selection to Hooker. good reason. faulty goods. greater success than contributing to the weakest and least perfectly organised must The compromise cobbled together by Lyell At Burlington House, the Linnean Society manuscript Darwin had been working at always succumb’. He described some of SET IN HISTORY and Hooker called for a joint presentation meeting ended, after a long series of other (and dawdling over) for 20 years. One of the variations that occur normally within a What happened next was, for some modern before a meeting of the Linnean Society scientific papers, with no discussion of Darwin’s recent letters had also mentioned species, and theorised about how different critics, a case of gentlemen friends using their a few days later, on 1 July 1858. Lyell and natural selection. The society’s president Lyell’s favourable impression of Wallace’s forms could determine whether animals lived social class and professional status to protect Hooker wrote an introductory letter in which went home muttering about the lack of work, and in his cover letter Wallace asked or died: an antelope with shorter or weaker one of their own. Lyell and Hooker conspired, the ‘two indefatigable naturalists’, Darwin any ‘striking discoveries’ that year. And so Darwin to show the new manuscript to legs would be easier prey for big cats. A they argue, to deny a little-known outsider’s and Wallace, started out on equal footing, began the greatest revolution in the history Lyell, if he deemed it worthy. But had passenger pigeon with less powerful wings rightful claim to priority. But Wallace himself having ‘independently and unknown to one of science. he simply followed his practice with his would have a harder time finding enough did not feel that way when he found out another, conceived the same very ingenious Richard Conniff is an award-winning magazine writer. previous articles, sending the manuscript food, ‘and in both cases the result must about it three months later. He was, he later theory’. But they also made it clear that This is an edited extract of his book The Species Seekers: via Stevens to the editors of Annals and necessarily be a diminution of the population wrote, honoured that his ‘sudden intuition’ Darwin had come first, emphasising the 1844 Heroes, Fools and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth. Magazine of Natural History, credit for the of the modified species’. On the other hand, had received credit ‘on the same level with manuscript, ‘the contents of which we had discovery of natural selection would have a change in circumstances – a drought, the prolonged labours of Darwin’. His essay both of us been privy to for many years’ – been entirely his, and the name Wallace a plague of locusts or the appearance of had been ‘hastily written and immediately a stretch in Lyell’s case, as he had only heard might now be as famous as Darwin. some new predator – could make the parent sent off’. But Darwin had worked for years about Darwin’s theory for the first time in

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