4/30/2023 0 Comments Alfred wallace![]() ![]() This advocated an evolutionary origin for the solar system, the earth, and living things. Both he and Bates had read Vestiges, a controversial work of popular science, published anonymously in 1844. Unlike Darwin, Wallace began his career as a travelling naturalist already believing in evolution. It was praised by Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell and by others, such as the novelist Joseph Conrad, who called it his "favorite bedside companion". It became one of the most popular natural history travel journals of the 19th century. In 1858 he sent an article outlining his theory to Darwin it was published, along with a description of Darwin's own theory, in the same year.Īccounts of his studies and adventures there were eventually published in 1869 as The Malay Archipelago. While he was exploring the archipelago, he refined his thoughts about evolution and had his famous insight on natural selection. Why was it, he wondered, that the animals and plants on the Bali side of the channel were of Asian types, while those on the Lombok side were Australasian in type? This had to mean that the western group had evolved from common western stock, while the eastern group had evolved from a common eastern stock. I believe the western part to be a separated portion of continental Asia, while the eastern is a fragmentary prolongation of a former west Pacific continent". The boundary line passes between islands closer together than others belonging to the same group. yet there is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits. "In this archipelago there are two distinct faunas rigidly circumscribed, which differ as much as do those of Africa and South America. Yet their flora and fauna were so different. Bali and Lombok were two islands in the archipelago only 17 miles apart at the widest (28 km), roughly the same size and with the same climate, soil, elevation and aspect. ![]() His observations of the clear zoological differences across a narrow strait in the archipelago led to his proposing the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace Line. More than a thousand of them represented species new to science. Wallace collected more than 125,000 specimens in the Dutch East Indies (more than 80,000 beetles alone). From 1854 to 1862, age 31 to 39, Wallace travelled through the Dutch East Indies (now Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens for sale and to study nature. ![]()
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