The Red Notebook

The Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project: Alfred Russel Wallace’s address books are now available for downloading

Beautiful! These are not simply address books; they are works of art. Please check them out!

(I have a bit of a thing about old notebooks.)

One-hundred and fifty years ago today, Charles Darwin first went public with his theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection, when his friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker read out a hastily compiled paper to the Linnean Society. The recent death of his youngest son prevented Darwin from attending.

Darwin was finally forced into publication as a result of a letter he received from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was exploring the Malay Archipelago. Confined to his tent with a fever, Wallace had independently come up with the same idea as Darwin. Unlike Darwin, who had kept his great idea secret, and had spent the last twenty years gathering evidence in support of it, Wallace dashed off a quick letter to Darwin, explaining his idea in full. Darwin was devastated: Wallace was about to scoop him.

At this point, conspiracy theorists are in the habit of claiming that Darwin did the dirty on Wallace by going quickly to press before Wallace could return to Britain. Some have even gone so far as to claim that Darwin stole Wallace’s idea—a claim which is manifestly bollocks. Wallace himself later expressed complete satisfaction in how he had been treated.

Lyell and Hooker, who both already knew about Darwin’s great idea, urged their friend to publish. They suggested a joint paper, based on an earlier draft of Darwin’s theory and the text of Wallace’s letter to Darwin. They read it before the Linnean Society on 1st June, 1958 under the snappy title of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.

Nobody at the Linnean Society batted an eye-lid. It was an almost a total non-event.

I’m not going to get bogged down in a detailed analysis of the Darwin-Wallace paper, other than to say that Wallace’s contribution to it is a wonderful piece of prose which reads far more clearly than Darwin’s. It contains one particularly haunting section which sent shivers down my spine the first time I read it:

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of an immense bird population is that of the passenger pigeon of the United States, which lays only one, or at most two eggs, and is said to rear generally but one young one. Why is this bird so extraordinarily abundant, while others producing two or three times as many young are much less plentiful? The explanation is not difficult. The food most congenial to this species, and on which it thrives best, is abundantly distributed over a very extensive region, offering such differences of soil and climate, that in one part or another of the area the supply the supply never fails. The bird is capable of a very rapid and long-continued flight, so that it can pass without fatigue over the whole of the district it inhabits, and as soon as the supply of food begins to fail in one place is able to discover a fresh feeding-ground. This example strikingly shows us that the procuring a constant supply of wholesome food is almost the sole condition requisite for ensuring the rapid increase of a given species, since neither the limited fecundity, nor the unrestricted attacks of birds of prey and of man are here sufficient to check it.

Wallace could not have chosen a more poignant example of an immense population of animals impregnable to the attacks of birds of prey and man: fifty-six years later, the very last passenger pigeon died in Cincinnati Zoo.

Her name was Martha.

See also: Books – Alfred Russel Wallace, a life

Dr George Beccaloni of the Natural History Museum, London, is the Chairman and founder of the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund. He has provided some detailed and interesting feedback to my earlier post about the recent Wallace podcast, describing a number of memorials to Alfred Russel Wallace in the UK.

He would be interested to hear of any others Wallace memorials that aren’t on his list. (Erm, no, not that Wallace memorial.)

I caught the following while I was demolishing my kitchen this afternoon:

BBC Radio 4: GreatLives – Alfred Russel Wallace

The man who almost scooped Darwin. Redmond O’Hanlon chooses naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace as his Great Life. When you compare their jungle adventures, there’s a similarity between the two. Dr Sandy Knapp adds to the general enthusiasm for beetles, butterflies and bugs, and Matthew Parris presents.

Duration, 28mins. The programme is available on the mp3 file for one week only [apologies for the previous broken link].

• Books: Alfred Russel Wallace: a Life by Peter Raby
• Gruts Books: Trawler by Redmond O’Hanlon

One-hundred and forty-nine years ago today, if his own account of events is to be believed (which has been questioned by some), Charles Darwin received the biggest bombshell of his scientific career. Having delayed publishing his theory of evolution by means of natural selection for many years, he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who was in Ternate on the Malayan Archipelago (modern day Indonesia), indicating that he was about to be scooped: in bed with a tropical fever, Wallace had independently come up with the theory of Natural Selection.

Wallace’s letter no longer survives (which is wonderful for conspiracy theorists), but we do still have the letter Darwin immediately wrote to his friend and confidante, Charles Lyell:

My dear Lyell

Some year or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I sh^d be forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briefly my views of “Natural Selection” depending on the Struggle for existence.— I never saw a more striking coincidence. if Wallace had my M.S.

Natural History Museum: Wallace’s treasures go online

Lost treasures that belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the process of evolution by natural selection, are online for the first time through the Natural History Museum’s website.

The newly digitised items in Wallace Online give a rare and personal insight into Wallace’s life as a naturalist, collector, family man, spiritualist, social commentator and great thinker.

The Wallace Collection contains, amongst other things, images and transcripts of original, handwritten letters, such as this one from Wallace to his brother, John, showing an uncharacteristic lack of modesty:

… I do not know if you have seen the wonderful book of Mr Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” published about four years ago, which has revolutionised Natural History & caused more discussion & excitement than any other book <…..> on a scientific subject during the present century, I have some little share in the work myself having discovered the main principle on which the work depends, called by Mr. D. Natural Selection, & communicated it to him before the work was published.

This internet thing is going to turn into a really useful resource some day soon.

See also: Alfred Russel Wallace: a life (book review)

Despite successfully arguing that they are our nearest living relatives, Charles Darwin never encountered any of the great apes in the wild. Most of his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle was spent in and around South America, and, although Beagle did eventually complete a circumnavigation of the globe, none of her ports of call were anywhere near the chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas of central Africa, or the orang-utans of Sumatra and Borneo.

Darwin’s first encounter with an ape occurred on 28th March, 1838—a year and a half after Beagle returned to Falmouth. The ape in question was a baby female orang-utan, her name was Jenny, and she was the latest star attraction at London Zoo. Darwin, who had recently begun research on the transmutation of species was fascinated. In a letter to his sister Susan, he wrote:

Two days since, when it was very warm, I rode to the Zoological Society […] I saw also the Ourang-outang in great perfection: the keeper showed her an apple, but would not give it her, whereupon she threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child.— She then looked very sulky & after two or three fits of pashion [sic], the keeper said, “Jenny if you will stop bawling & be a good girl, I will give you the apple.— She certainly understood every word of this, &, though like a child, she had great work to stop whining, she at last succeeded, & then got the apple, with which she jumped into an arm chair & began eating it, with the most contented countenance imaginable.—

Seventeen years later, in 1855, Darwin’s future co-discoverer of evolution by means of Natural Selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, was to encounter orang-utans in their natural habitat, in the forests of Borneo. He described the encounter in chapter 4 of The Malay Archipelago:

Just a week after my arrival at the mines, I first saw a Mias [orang-utan]. I was out collecting insects, not more than a quarter of a mile from the house, when I heard a rustling in a tree near, and, looking up, saw a large red-haired animal moving slowly along, hanging from the branches by its arms. It passed on from tree to tree until it was lost in the jungle, which was so swampy that I could not follow it. This mode of progression was, however, very unusual, and is more characteristic of the Hylobates [one of the four genera of gibbons] than of the Orang. I suppose there was some individual peculiarity in this animal, or the nature of the trees just in this place rendered it the most easy mode of progression.

The next orang-utan to cross Wallace’s path wasn’t so fortunate:

About a fortnight afterwards I heard that one was feeding in a tree in the swamp just below the house, and, taking my gun, was fortunate enough to find it in the same place. As soon as I approached, it tried to conceal itself among the foliage; but, I got a shot at it, and the second barrel caused it to fall down almost dead, the two balls having entered the body.

Skip forward another 151 years to 2006, and I am pleased to report that intrepid, young explorers are still encountering orang-utans in their natural habitat. Earlier this month, my partner Jen and I received a hand-written letter (remember those?) from Jen’s nephew, Liam, who is currently working his way around the world after graduating from university:

After a night in Medan [North Sumatra] we headed to Bukit Lawang on a bus complete with live chickens and people sitting on the roof. Bukit Lawang is an Orang-utan sanctuary so the next day, with the help of a local guide, we were out on a treck [sic]. Not long into the treck we saw our first Orang-utan. With the fear of not seeing another the cameras were out. After 5 mins we walked away, safe in the knowledge the treck wasn’t a waste of money, leaving a startled Orang-utan behind.

A bit further into the treck our guide suddenly stopped and asked if we could hear something. We gathered round and stood listening. We could hear a slight buzzing sound and then all of a sudden the guide ran off, a little confused we continued to stand listening and looking. As we looked at the floor we saw we were stood where some very large bees were making a nest. We were soon running through the jungle being chased by these very angry bees. At 1 point I did manage to glance over my shoulder only to see the bees had formed a cartoon style arrow pointing in our direction! Once we had reached safety we assessed the damage and everyone had received at least one sting to the leg, apart from the guide! Thankfully the guide gave us all a bit of banana to rub on the sting. My leg was still sore a week later so I don’t know why the guide thought a bit of fruit would help. A few hrs later we were at the Orang-utan feeding station when all of a sudden the guide started running again. Where did we get this guy from? With the banana still sticky on our bee stings we didn’t hesitate this time and started running straight away. Apparently we were being approached by the park’s most violent Orang-utan.

I have seen the Great Barrier Reef, licked ants in the Australian rain forest, and stood on the Great Wall of China, but I got there the easy way: tourist class. I can’t help wishing I’d been a bit more adventurous in my youth. But, if I had, I suppose, I wouldn’t have been me.

Let’s hope young explorers like Liam are still able to watch orang-utans in their natural environment in another 150 years’ time. Somehow, sadly, I doubt it.