Alfred Russel Wallace
Twenty years after the voyage of the Beagle another British naturalist came
to the notion of evolution by natural selection, independently of Darwin, as a result of his own travels in a large group of islands.
Between 1854 and 1862 the naturalist, ornithologist and collector Alfred Russel Wallace made some 60 separate journeys
by boat and on foot in Indonesia. His observation of the variations in the flora and fauna
of the different islands of the archipelago led him to formulate his own theory of natural
selection. In 1858, a year before the publication of Origin of Species, papers by Wallace
and Darwin on their respective theories were read to a meeting of the Linnean Society in London.
Wallace's work is the basis of the hypothetical faunal boundary through Indonesia
known as the Wallace Line, and of a later variant of the boundary called the Weber Line. I
intend to follow the course of the Beagle on her return to England from the
Pacific. However, when I reach the Cocos Islands I shall make a diversion to follow the
Wallace Line and the Weber Line. This will give me material upon which to base an account
of Wallace's work and to make a comparison of Darwin's and Wallace's contributions to the
theory of evolution. It will be interesting, also, to cruise some waters in Indonesia that
are little visited by British yachtsmen.