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Wallace, Darwin, and the Theory of Natural Selection: a Study in the Development of Ideas and Attitudes Author(S): Barbara G

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Wallace, Darwin, and the Theory of Natural Selection: a Study in the Development of Ideas and Attitudes Author(S): Barbara G Wallace, Darwin, and the Theory of Natural Selection: A Study in the Development of Ideas and Attitudes Author(s): Barbara G. Beddall Source: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 261-323 Published by: Springer Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330498 Accessed: 24-07-2018 01:35 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Biology This content downloaded from 150.135.165.122 on Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:35:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Wallace, Darwin, and the Theory of Natural Selection A Study in the Development of Ideas and Attitudes BARBARA G. BEDDALL 2502 Bronson Road, Fairfield, Connecticut INTRODUCTION On 1 July 1908 the Linnean Society of London commemorated the reading before the Society fifty years earlier of the Darwin- Wallace joint papers, "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." 1 On the first occasion only some thirty Fellows and guests had been present at a quiet, unheralded meeting; the authors themselves were absent. Now there was a large and distinguished gathering celebrating the historic event. Two of the original cast were present, the nat- uralist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911). The other two, the biolo- gist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) and the geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) had been dead for many years. Hooker, now a venerable nonagenarian, spoke of his "half- century-old real or fancied memories" of that June in 1858 when his old friend Darwin received Wallace's paper on natural selection. He based his account on Sir Francis Darwin's Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, remarking with some uneasiness that, beyond the letters from Darwin to himself and to Lyell, no other documentary evidence existed of the events of those turbulent weeks before the reading of the papers. Despite a search, the letters to Darwin from Hooker and Lyell could not be found, "and, most surprising of all, Mr. Wallace's letter and its enclosure have disappeared." 2 1. Linnean Society of London, The Darwin-Wallace Celebration held on 1st July, 1908, by the Linnean Society of London (London; The Society, 1908). 2. Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, in- cluding an Autobiographical Chapter (London: Murray, 1887; reprinted 261 This content downloaded from 150.135.165.122 on Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:35:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BARBARA G. BEDDALL Hooker was troubled by the meagerness of the evidence, but Marchant, Wallace's first biographer, was unconcerned, and most people have concurred in his opinion that the eight ex- tant letters received from Darwin while Wallace was in the Malay Archipelago "explain themselves and reveal the inner story of the independent discovery of the theory of Natural Selection." 3 But do they? A second question pertains to the relationship between Wal- lace and Darwin. Their recollections are often taken to be ac- curate reflections of their earlier thoughts and actions, but details may have been altered and the emphasis changed. Both men did come to play the roles assigned to them by history, but the making of the myth, in which they both participated, has obscured some of the facts. This study will emphasize Wallace and the influences on him. It will attempt to disentangle the various lines of evidence, to trace Wallace's progress toward the discovery of the theory of natural selection, to throw some light on what happened both before and after June 1858, and to suggest some alterna- tives to commonly accepted theories about these events. It is based on a re-evaluation and reinterpretation of contemporary sources, both published and unpublished. Because the aim has been to concentrate on primary source material, exhaustive reference to every author who has written since on these sub- jects has not been attempted. In particular, three of Wallace's published papers are con- sidered in detail: "On the Law which has regulated the Intro- duction of New Species," "Note on the Theory of Permanent and Geographical Varieties," and "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." A number of previously published letters bear on questions raised here. For ease of reference, information about these let- ters has been arranged in tabular form in the Appendix and the letters numbered consecutively. They will be referred to by numbers in brackets in the text, with further discussion when required in appropriate footnotes. Use has also been made of a manuscript notebook kept by Wallace during his travels in the Malay Archipelago, and I am grateful to Mr. Thomas O'Grady and the Council of the Linnean Society of London for permission to quote from it. in 2 vols., New York, Basic Books, 1959); Linnean Society of London, The Darwin-Wallace Celebration, p. 16. See also notes 115 and 139. 3. James Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York: Harper, 1916), p. 105. 262 This content downloaded from 150.135.165.122 on Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:35:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Wallace, Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection I. AN INQUIRING MIND He who in place of reasoning, employs authority, assumes that those to whom he addresses himself are incapable of forming a judgment of their own. If they submit to this insult, may it not be presumed they acknowledge the justice of it? Wallace, "Notebook, 1855-1859," from Jeremy Bentham's Book of Fallacies4 Not until 1841, when he was eighteen years of age, did Alfred Russel Wallace, the eminent naturalist, begin his solitary study of the natural world around him. As a frequently unemployed and always impecunious surveyor, he turned to the study of plants to fill his leisure time: But what occupied me chiefly and became more and more the solace and delight of my lonely rambles among the moors and mountains, was my first introduction to the vari- ety, the beauty, and the mystery of nature as manifested i the vegetable kingdom.5 Wallace's early years and education were quite undistin- guished. The eighth child of an increasingly impoverished family, he was born on 8 January 1823 in the remote village of Usk in Monmouthshire, Wales. When he was five, the family moved to Hertford, near London, and it was at the Hertford Grammar School that he received his "very ordinary education." This ended when he was almost fourteen, and after that he was more or less on his own. Despite his commonplace upbring- ing, however, he had received a priceless gift from his father: a love of books and reading-a key to the world for anyone who wants to use it. After a few months spent with his brother John in London in the spring of 1837, Wallace joined his oldest brother, Wil- liam, to learn land surveying. But these were lean years for William, just before the rush of activity brought on by the construction of railroads, and he often had difficulty in finding enough work for himself and his younger brother. During one lull in 1839, Wallace spent some months learning the watch- making trade. Fortunately, business changes brought this to an end before Wallace was formally apprenticed, and he re- turned to surveying with William. 4. Alfred Russel Wallace, "Notebook, 1855-1859," MS, Linnean So- ciety of London, p. 102. This and other quotations are reproduced with permission from the Wallace and other manuscript material in the Library of the Linnean Society of London. 5. Alfred Russel Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions (New York; Dodd, Mead, 1905), I, 191. 263 This content downloaded from 150.135.165.122 on Tue, 24 Jul 2018 01:35:11 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms BARBARA G. BEDDALL Two years later, in 1841, Wallace purchased his first book on natural history, a shilling pamphlet on botany published by the improbably named Society for Promoting the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. This quickly became his constant com- panion on his rambles through the countryside. Eager now to learn more, he was attracted by an advertisement for a textbook by one of England's experts, The Elements of Botany by John Lindley. But this expensive purchase, which arrived in July 1842, was a disappointment because it described all the orders of plants without indicating the British species. Not deterred, Wallace, with the aid of Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Plants, set about annotating his copy of Lindley, thereby giving himself the rudiments of a botanical education.6 How Wallace first happened upon Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle is not known, but he tipped quotations from the first edition into his copy of Lindley. He was apparently struck by Darwin's comment that to receive the fullest enjoyment from the passing scene, "a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment." 7 Still another purchase made about the same time was Swainson's Treatise on the Geography and Classification of Animals, a remarkable assembly indeed for someone with no biological background whatever.8 William's business did not improve, and Wallace again left to look for something else.
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