Previously and which he had since then been subject to testing. In this paper Wallace set out his ' Sarawak Law ' which he claimed to have discovered some ten years Publication known as the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society) appeared in a well-regarded scientifically inclined In September 1855 a paper entitled On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species by ALFRED R. Similarly employed the Malay Archipelago and the Spice Islands(1854-62).

In 1848 he travelled to the Amazon basin in association with Bates and they spent several years there, jointly or seperately, collecting plant The project could be funded initially from their personal savings, from sales of beetle specimens from their collections to other enthusiasts, and subsequently by gentlemen naturalists or scientific institutions back home who would pay well for interesting samples of flora and fauna collected in remote locations. Insights were to be very possibly to be gained in foreign 257.īy 1847 Wallace had encouraged his friend Bates to join him in a Natural History related project. These extracts from my early letters to Bates suffice to show that the great problem of the origin of species was already distinctly formulated in my mind that I was not satisfied with the more or less vague solutions at that time offered that I believed the conception of evolution through natural law so clearly formulated in the 'Vestiges' to be, so far as it went, a true one and that I firmly believed that a full and careful study of the facts of nature would ultimately lead to a solution of the mystery.Īlfred Russel Wallace : My Life, pp. It contains some remarkable views on my favourite subject - the variations, arrangements, distribution, etc., of species.' On December 28 th 1845 Alfred Russel Wallace wrote to his friend Henry Walter Bates (1842-52) concerning this work that both had recently read:-Īnd at the very end of the letter I say: 'There is a work published by the Ray Society I should much like to see, Okens Elements of Physiophilosophy. Included in its content was a suggestion that, at the time of Creation, create-ures were invested with the potential for progressive Progressive transmutation of species governed by God-given laws in an accessible narrative which seemed to offer to tie together numerous scientific theories of the age. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the This work caused quite a sensation, received a wide readership, and became a best-seller. It was in 1844 that a semi-scientific workĮntitled 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' was first published, by an author who chose to remain anonymous. Monmouthshire (now part of Gwent), Wales.Īfter leaving school in 1837 at the age of fourteen, due to his family's financial constraints, he became passionately interested in beetleĬollecting and other aspects of natural history. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was born in Usk,

Alfred russel wallace a life