A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund & G. W. Beccaloni THE NATURALIST WHO GOT AHEAD OF DARWIN ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, DISCOVERER OF THE ROLE OF NATURAL SELECTION IN THE EVOLUTION OF SPECIES Xavier Bellés ■ A SLOW YET EXTREMELY REFLECTIVE WRITER write this, in case of my sudden death, as my most solemn & last request, which I am sure you will We have to admit that had it not been for Alfred consider the same as if legally entered in my will, Russel Wallace (1823-1913), Darwin may never that you will devote 400£ to its publication & further have published On the Origin of Species. Retired will yourself, or through Hensleigh, take trouble in in his house in Downe, near London, Darwin had promoting it». Apart from being touching, the letter been puzzling over the problem of the formation of states much about the conceptual and «strategic» species since he came back from his voyage aboard importance he attributed to the Essay at the time. the Beagle, more than twenty years earlier. His observations clearly indicated that species evolved, ■ WALLACE: THE FIRST WARNING transformed into new species, yet he was unsure of the mechanisms underlying such transformations. Darwin One of Darwin’s best friends was Charles Lyell, was a slow, refl ective writer, who shied away from geologist and one of the most infl uential naturalists hypothesising without reams of supporting evidence. in England at the time, who insisted that Darwin He also knew his ideas on the origin of species in should write his fi nal theory once and for all, even general, and on mankind in particular, would arouse if he did not have all the answers. A key event controversy in Victorian society, transpired in 1855 when Lyell and he did not want to add more read a work published by an fuel to the fi re. «WHEN DARWIN RECEIVED obscure naturalist, Alfred However, in 1842 he wrote THE TERNATE ESSAY, Russel Wallace, who was in a 37-page draft (the famous the Malay Archipelago at the HE BECAME SERIOUSLY Sketch), hurriedly and in pencil, time collecting animals and with unfi nished sentences, an CONCERNED ABOUT plants. The name of the work irregular structure and a lot PRIORITY» was On the Law which Has of corrections and crossing- Regulated the Introduction of outs. Here, we can fi nd the fi rst New Species, and it was based on ideas on the evolution of species and the possible observation suggesting that «Every species has come mechanisms governing it. Then two years later, in into existence coincident both in space and time with 1844, he wrote a 189-page manuscript, a lot tidier a pre-existing closely allied species». In this work, and more careful, gathering his conclusions at that known as the Sarawak document, he highlighted the moment, and it bears some resemblance with what importance of extinction and modifi ed offspring would later be On the Origin of Species (De Beer, – divergence – as key elements in the process of 1958). It is fair to say that the manuscript (known species transmutation through time. Lyell clearly saw by Darwinians as the Essay) served as a kind of that Wallace was precipitously entering the fi eld that insurance in case he did not fi nish the fi nal version, had occupied Darwin for more than twenty years, «the big book» to which he aspired, the one he wrote and warned his friend (Davies, 2013). Darwin read ever so slowly. It is moving to see the long letter the document, but gave it no importance, writing in concerning the Essay that Darwin sent Emma, his the margins: «Nothing very new […]; it seems all wife, on 5 July 1844, in which he writes: «I therefore creation with him […]; his law hold good; he puts On the left, Alfred Russel Wallace, in Singapore in 1862, before returning to the UK after spending eight years in the Malay Archipelago. MÈTODE 7 Natural History Museum, London Wallace kept Darwin’s letters and notes with special care. This envelope, from around 1902, held eight letters he had received from Darwin when in the Malay Archipelago. Wallace’s writing shows that he never recovered the original Ternate manuscript he sent to Darwin, nor did he see the galley proofs before its publication in the third volume of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society in 1858. the facts in striking point of view», maybe because Wallace profusely used the term «creation» instead of «transmutation», which was the word in use at the time to talk about the formation of species. Darwin ascribed no importance to Wallace’s work, but due to Lyell’s persistence, he resumed the writing of his book. ■ THE TERNATE ESSAY ARRIVES In early June 1858, Darwin received a manuscript and a letter from Wallace, sent from the small island of Ternate, in the Malay Archipelago. The manuscript bore the suggestive name: On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefi nitely from the Original Type, and proposed certain variability to exist Xavier Bellés between the individuals of the same species. It also suggested that the variations that better adapted Male (below) and female Trogonoptera brookiana (Wallace, to the environment would have greater chances of 1855) (Lepidoptera, Papilionidae), butterfl y discovered by Wallace surviving and breeding, and would separate from the in Borneo and named in honour of British Raj of Sarawak, original species until turning into another, different, James Brooke. Wallace’s description placed it within the genus Ornithoptera, having a wingspan of 15 to 17 cm, it is largely black in one. In short, it was a theory that explained the colour but with fl uorescent green spots and is considered one of origin of species by natural selection. In the letter the most beautiful butterfl ies in the world. The specimens in the accompanying the manuscript, Wallace asked Darwin photograph are from Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. 8 MÈTODE to show it to Lyell as he wished to know his opinion to head for Amazonia, sponsored by Samuel Stevens, on the matter before publishing who offered to sell the animals and plants they found it. Darwin was stunned as the to museums and private collections. On 26 April Ternate essay contained the 1848, they set sail from Liverpool and headed for formal development of his own Brazil, and on 26 May they arrived to Pará, currently ideas on the origin of species, Belém. Wallace spent four hard but informative years which had been taking shape since in the Amazon, which he narrated in his book A he came back from his voyage on Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. the Beagle. He himself stated that the But the journey was cut short when the ship bringing manuscript was a good summary of him home was shipwrecked in the middle of the the work he had been doing for the last Atlantic, and his collections and diaries were lost. twenty years. The experience was so arduous that upon his arrival in London he vowed never to undertake a similar task again. Two years later, however, he embarked on ■ BUT WHO WAS WALLACE? a ship for the Malay Archipelago, where he stayed Alfred Russel Wallace was born on 8 January for eight years. During that time, he discovered an 1823 in Usk, southeast Wales, to a middle-class amazing number of species unknown to science family with limited resources. When he was twelve, and gathered an enormous volume of data about the he left school to go to London to work as a carpenter with his brother John. A year later, he started working with another brother, William, fi rst as a clock-maker in training, then as a topographer and fi eld supervisor «WITHOUT FURTHER EVIDENCE IT IS for the railway. The job taught him to draw maps and INAPPROPRIATE TO CHARGE DARWIN design buildings, providing instruction in mechanics, WITH COPYING WALLACE» forestry techniques and many other skills that would prove valuable in the following years. He spent seven years on the railway, in close contact distribution of animals and plants (McKinney, 1972; with nature, and conceivably Raby, 2001; Wallace, 1905). It was there that the idea developed an interest in natural of the mechanism of natural selection dawned upon history then. In 1842, he read the him, and he sent Darwin the famous Ternate essay. book Treatise on Geography and Classifi cation of Animals, by W. Swainson, ■ THE MEETING OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY which introduced him to biogeography. Wallace admitted later that reading the book When Darwin received the Ternate essay, he became sparked his scientifi c inclination. In 1844 he moved seriously concerned about priority, and asked for to Leicester to teach drawing and cartography. In advice, fi rst from Lyell and then from the botanist Leicester library he read An Essay on the Principle Joseph Hooker, another highly infl uential individual. of Population, by Malthus, and met Henry Walter Lyell and Hooker contrived a plan whereby Wallace’s Bates, a keen entomologist who introduced him to the work could be released without leaving any room world of beetles and butterfl ies. A year later, on the for doubt that Darwin had already been mulling death of his brother William, he took over his land over similar ideas for many years. In just twelve supervision business, despite which it closed shortly days they organised a joint reading of Darwin and afterwards. The following year, 1845, he engaged in Wallace’s works at the Linnean Society of London, important readings, like the work of R. Chambers during a science session on 1 July 1858.