If I could meet one historical figure, it would have to be Alfred Wallace.
One of the most admirable, adventurous and knowledgeable people in the history of science, Wallace also faced his fair share of trials and tribulations over the course of his expeditions. From nearly blowing off his hand, to losing tens of thousands of Natural History specimens following a fire on his ship, to having what must surely be the most productive bout of malaria in human history. Lying bedridden and feverish, it came to Wallace one diseased day the process by which species become adapted to their environment.
Nowadays, Wallace is known, alongside Darwin, as the co-discoverer of natural selection, as the father of the field of evolutionary biogeography and as quite possibly the greatest tropical field biologist to have ever lived. He’s also got some really great descriptions of a life well-lived. Here are three of my favourites.
Wallace on the beauty of the Amazon’s old-growth jungles
“There is, however, one natural feature of this country, the interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated in a single walk: it is the “virgin forest.” Here no one who has any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be disappointed; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, the strange buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or furrowed stems of others, the curious and even extraordinary creepers and climbers which wind around them, hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, sometimes curling and twisting on the ground like great serpents, then mounting to the very tops of the trees, thence throwing down roots and fibres which hang waving in the air, or twisting round each other form ropes and cables of every variety of size and often of the most perfect regularity. These, and many other novel features-the parasitic plants growing on the trunks and branches, the wonderful variety of the foliage, the strange fruits and seeds that lie rotting on the ground-taken altogether surpass description, and produce feelings in the beholder of admiration and awe. It is here, too, that the rarest birds, the most lovely insects, and the most interesting mammals and reptiles are to be found. Here lurk the jaguar and the boa-constrictor, and here amid the densest shade the bell-bird tolls his peal.”
Wallace on a typical day’s fieldwork
“Singapore is rich in beetles, and before I leave I think I shall have a beautiful collection of them. I will tell you how my day is now occupied. Get up at half-past five, bath, and coffee. Sit down to arrange and put away my insects of the day before, and set them in a safe place to dry. Charles mends our insect-nets, fills our pin-cushions, and gets ready for the day. Breakfast at eight; out to the jungle at nine. We have to walk about a quarter mile up a steep hill to reach it, and arrive dripping with perspiration. Then we wander about in the delightful shade along paths made by the Chinese wood-cutters till two or three in the afternoon, generally returning with fifty or sixty beetles, some very rare or beautiful, and perhaps a few butterflies. Change clothes and sit down to kill and pin insects, Charles doing the flies, wasps, and bugs; I do not trust him yet with beetles. Dinner at four, then at work again till six: coffee. Then read or talk, or, if insects very numerous, work again till eight or nine. Then to bed.”
Wallace’s description of a golden birdwing butterfly
“The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause.”
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