Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species PDF
Preview Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species
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
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