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The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was one of the world's most important scientists. His seminal contributions to biology rival those of his friend and colleague Charles Darwin, though he is far less well known. Together Wallace and Darwin proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, and their prolific subsequent work laid the foundations of modern evolutionary biology, and much more besides.
Wallace made enduring scholarly contributions to subjects as diverse as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and astrobiology. His pioneering work on evolutionary biogeography (the science that seeks to explain the geographical distribution of organisms) led to him becoming recognised as that subject’s ‘father’. Beyond this Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century, and his book The Malay Archipelago (which was Joseph Conrad’s favourite bedside reading) is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print. Wallace was a man with an extraordinary breadth of interests who was actively engaged with many of the big questions and important issues of his day. He was anti-slavery, anti-eugenics, anti-vivisection, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, a conservationist and an advocate of woman's rights. He strongly believed in the rights of the ordinary person, was a socialist, an anti-vaccinationist (for rational reasons), and a believer in naturalistic, evolutionary spiritualism. He did not come from a privileged background and was largely self-taught. For a brief biography see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/mini-biography
The Wallace Correspondence Project (WCP) was founded by George Beccaloni in 2010. Its aims are to locate, digitise, catalogue, transcribe, interpret and publish Wallace's surviving correspondence and other manuscripts. About 5,700 letters to and from Wallace are currently known to survive, and they are held by c. 240 institutions and individuals worldwide. Wallace's letters are a biographical treasure trove, which provides a far better picture of the 'real' Wallace than his heavily edited and censored published writings (e.g. his autobiography My Life (1905) and his letters in Marchant's Letters and Reminiscences (1916)). For example, Wallace never even mentions his wife's name (Annie) in any of his published writings, including his autobiography. The letters are also key to gaining a deeper understanding of his scientific and other work: how and why his ideas arose, and how they evolved over time.
The WCP is unlocking this valuable resource by gathering all the letters together for the first time, and transcribing them so that they can be more easily read and information within them discovered using electronic searches for words and phrases. The vast amount of unpublished information which is coming to light will surely form the basis for numerous articles, scholarly papers, PhD theses and perhaps the first definitive biography.
Epsilon is being used by the WCP's as its online archive of Wallace's correspondence. It replaces our previous archive, Wallace Letters Online, which was last updated in 2015. The process of editing the transcripts and associated metadata is a work in progress which will take many years to complete. Our project’s policy is, however, to make the information we have available to users at the earliest possible opportunity, even if it is incomplete and/or imperfect. For a guide to our data, including the protocols we use for metadata and transcriptions, please see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
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Letter in reply to ARW, re. ARW's eye infection; Hartert's domestic troubles; expedition in Algeria with Rothschild collecting birds and butterflies; numbers of bird specimens from Papua, Australia and the Philippines [at Tring]. 2 folios (3 pp).
Glad Hartert wrote to ARW re. Ptilotis limbata because ARW seems to have overlooked fact that had found it in Bali - obtained only 1 specimen there - fault of agent that it got misplaced from ARW's private collection (which was afterwards purchased by the BM) & was bought by Mr Gould. ARW's notes indicate Ptilotis limbata obtained by him in Baly [sic] and Lombok. Inc. list of birds collected by ARW June 13+14, 1856.
Thanks for sending papers on birds of Baly [sic], Lombok, Tomboro, Sumba & other islands. Pleased to find that despite many additions to birds on Bali + Lombok "the broad facts of distribution as indicated by myself remain almost as marked as ever".
Asks for information re. number of species of birds now known for New Guinea incl. islands close to it - Waigiou, Sahratty + Aru islands, separating the land and the water birds; just a rough estimate; is comparing the ornithological richness of New Guinea with other larger islands and countries. Also numbers for Papuan Islands as a whole, say from Mysol to New Britain.
pray do not trouble yourself but I thought some estimate might have been made the last year or two that would do for me….
Many thanks for letter with approximate numbers of Papuan birds; agrees with Hartert's limitation of the restricted Papuan region - with one exception - the Ké Islands; needs one more figure - number of species of Birds of Paradise omitting the Bower birds but including of course the Epimachids [Epimachiedae]; and number of species of Ké Islands birds that had been added to the Papuan fauna in the list sent.