WCP4892

Letter (WCP4892.5292)

[[1]]

5 Westbourne Grove Terrace W.

Feb. 14th 1864.

My dear Sir Charles

My"Physical Geography paper will appear in the next volume of the "Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc." The coal of Borneo is very pure & very thick (36 feet in one case) but I cannot see at all clearly how it could be formed. Mr Motley1 who was killed at Benjarmassing[sic] wrote something about the formation of Coal now going on in Borneo, but I do not know when, except it was in the "Journal of the Indian Archipelago" five of six years ago.

Cockatoos are not found in Japan & nowhere [2] out of the Australian Region except in the Philippine Is[lands]. (one sp[ecies].) but these islands have had relations some time or other with Celebes2 & thus have obtained a few peculiar forms. The true honeysuckers (Meliphagidae3) are confined to the Australian region, — I do not remember saying any thing about their being found in Africa, where the Sunbirds (Nectariniidae4) a totally distinct group abound.

As regards Insects changing rapidly, I see nothing improbable in it. Though in a totally different way, they are as highly specialized as birds & mammals, & through the transformations they undergo have still more complicated relations with the organic & inorganic world. For instance they are subject to different kinds of [3] danger in their larva[,] pupa & imago5 state, — they have different enemies & special means of protection in each of these states, & changes of climate may probably affect them in each state differently; we may therefore expect very slight changes in the proportion of other animals & in physical geography & climate to produce an immediate change in their numbers & their organization. The fact that they do change rapidly is I think shown by the large number of peculiar forms of insects in Madeira6 compared with the birds & plants, — the same in Corsica7 where there are many peculiar species of insects, — also the very limited range of many insects as found by Bates8 & myself. Again your rule of the slow change of Mollusca applies to aquatic species [4] only. The land shells I presume change much more rapidly, a why[?] are almost every species in Moderna & in each of the West India Is[lands] peculiar? Being terrestrial they are affected as insects are by physical changes & more still by organic changes. These changes are certainly much slower in the sea.

I am glad you are still thinking about the Borneo exploration. I have a few days ago seen the person who told me about the bones in a cave. He tells me the cave was full of guano, — he had it broken up to two or three feet deep, — it was very solid & hard at and be[?] it to the depth they went, were numbers of [5]9 bones & teeth of animals — This person is a Mr. Coulson10 a mining Engineer who has been many years in Borneo. He gave a set of Borneo Coal fossils to your Geolog[ical]. Soc[iety]. Museum.11 He left London yesterday for Singapore, where he will be some time; & he told me that he would be happy to undertake the exploration of the caves.12

You would thus save the expense of sending a person out on purpose, & could not have a better man, & if you gave him full instructions he would follow [6] them out carefully & conscientiously. He has a thorough knowledge of the natives & manages them well & could get the work done more cheaply & effectually than any person new to the country that you could send out.

Sir James Brooke13 knows him well & has a good opinion of him.

The caves where he saw the bones are not in Sir J. Brookes[sic] territory but further N. but there are numbers of caves in [7] all parts of Borneo

His salary as Mining Engineer was I believe $300 a month (ab[ou]t. £965) this with expenses would not be more than £500 for a 5 or 6 months exploration, & according to the results obtained it might be continued or not.

Hoping this information may be useful to you14

Believe me | Yours very Sincerely | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

1
Motley, James (1822-1859). British coal mining engineer and naturalist. Engineer at the Eastern Archipelago Company 1849-53. Superintendent of Julia Hermina coal mine at Kalangan, Borneo 1853-59.
2
Celebes, now Sulawesi, one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia (the Malay Archipelago).
3
The Meliphagidae are now referred to as the honeyeaters, small to medium-sized birds inhabiting mostly Australia and New Guinea, but also New Zealand, some far eastern Pacific islands, and the islands to the northwest of New Guinea known as Wallacea.
4
The Nectariniidae is a family of birds comprised of the sunbirds and spiderhunters inhabiting a large range extending through most of Africa to the Middle East, South Asia, South-east Asia and southern China, to Indonesia, New Guinea and northern Australia.
5
In entomology, the final or adult stage in the development of an insect, during which it is sexually mature (OED).
6
An archipelago of four islands off the northwest coast of Africa, an autonomous region of Portugal.
7
A French island in the Mediterranean Sea.
8
Bates, Henry Walter (1825-1892). British naturalist, explorer and close friend of ARW. Bates accompanied ARW during his expedition to Amazonia.
9
The numbers ʹʹ2" (which is encircled on the original letter) and ʹ409ʹ appear at the top of the page.
10
Coulson, Robert ( - ). British mining engineer, active in Labuan, Borneo and Singapore form 1851-1876.
11
The Geological Society Museum was a collection established by the Geological Society of London in 1812 and accessible only to its members; the collection of rocks, minerals, fossils, and other geological specimens was dispersed to other scientific institutions in 1911.
12
ARW wrote of Coulsonʹs discovery and the need for further exploration of caves in Borneo in: Wallace, A. R. 1864. Bone-Caves in Borneo. The Reader. 3: 367 (19 March 1864). This was also published as Wallace, A. R. 1864. Bone-Caves in Borneo. Natural History Review. 4: 308-311 (April 1864).
13
Brooke, James (1803-1868). The first White Rajah of Sarawak from 1842-1868.
14
In a letter to ARW from 8 February 1864 [WCP2029_L1919], Lyell wrote: ʹI should like in my Bath address to introduce two or three sentences, I shall not have room for more as I am limited to one hour, on your observations of the two provinces of animal life, the Indian Archipelago province & the New Guinea one, or both sides of certain straits, & the probable connection of two distinct races of man being also separated or nearly so, by the same boundary lineʹ. This refers to what would come to be known as Wallace’s Line, or the Wallace Line, an invisible boundary that separates the zoogeographical regions of Asia (to the west of it) and Australasia (to the east). On 14 September 1864, Lyell delivered his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in Bath, on the topic of the glacial epoch and its relation to the antiquity of man, but he did not make any mention of ARWʹs work in the address (Report of the Thirty-Sixth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science; held at Bath in September 1864. 1865. London: John Murray [lx-lxxv]).

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP4892.5292)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Cooper, Rod [2012-11-29] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-01-15] Transcription checked by Barton, Michael [2020-08-27]

Please cite as “WCP4892,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 3 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4892