Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species

352 Pages·2014·4.337 MB·English

by  James T. Costa

Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species

Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species
Kk
James T. Costa
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2014
Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Costa, James T., 1963- author.
Wallace, Darwin, and the origin of species / James T. Costa.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 674- 72969- 8 (alk. paper)
1. Wallace, Alfred Russel, 1823– 1913. 2. Darwin, Charles, 1809– 1882. On
the origin of species. 3. Evolution (Biology) 4. Natural selection. I. Title.
QH26.C67 2014
576.8'2—dc23
2013040287
This one is for my guys, Addison and Eli—
Indefatigable in all they do.

Contents
Alfred Russel Wallace: A Short Biography
by Andrew Berry
ix
Introduction
1
1
Granted the Law
Alfred Russel Wallace’s Evolutionary Travels
15
2
The Consilient Mr. Wallace
Transmutation and Related Themes of Wallace’s Species Notebook
65
3
Wallace and Darwin
Parallels, Intersections, and Departures on the Evolutionary Road
104
viii Contents
4
Two Indefatigable Naturalists
Wallace and Darwin’s Watershed Papers
143
5
A Striking Coincidence
The Wallace and Darwin Papers of 1858 Compared
214
6
True with a Vengeance
From Delicate Arrangement to Conspiracy: A Guide
232
Coda
The Force of Admiration
265
Appendixes
283
Bibliography
301
Ac know ledg ments
317
Notes on the Text and Illustrations
319
Index
321
Alfred Russel Wallace: A Short Biography
by Andrew Berry
It is ironic that Alfred Russel Wallace’s fi nest moment— his 1858 discovery
of natural selection—h as in many ways compromised his place in history,
condemning him forever to footnotes in textbooks. It has resulted in his
always being coupled with Darwin, but as a ju nior partner: he is destined
always to play Watson to Darwin’s Holmes. One of the many interesting
features of the Wallace story, then, is how and why, relative at least to Dar-
win’s, his star has dimmed so precipitously. After all, he was one of the true
superstars of Victorian science; he was the codiscoverer of natural selec-
tion; he was the discoverer of what would become known as Wallace’s Line,
the biological discontinuity between Australasia and Asia; he was the father
of a whole new science, biogeography; and he was arguably the leading
tropical biologist of his day. Although Wallace missed out by a century or
so on our era of papers with author lists that read like phone books, his bib-
liography runs to more than 700 publications, including some twenty books,
several of them hefty two- volume tomes.
Wallace was born into genteel poverty in Usk, in what is now Wales, in
1823. Wallace’s father, a qualifi ed lawyer who never practiced and had a
facility for losing inherited money through inept investing, had no part icu -
lar Welsh connections. He had moved his large family—A lfred was eighth
of nine—t o Usk simply because, in his son’s words, it was “where the living
was as cheap as possible.” The family returned to Eng land, where Wallace
received the rudiments of an education in Hertford before, at age fourteen,
becoming apprenticed to his brother William in his land-s urveying busi-
ness. It was over the years that followed, as he trekked through the British
ix