and in the tropics, out of which which come the sudden illuminations or flashes of light leading to the solution of the problems before him. As to this wonderful mechanism of induction, Wallace observes:
I have long since come to see that no one deserves either praise or blame for the ideas that come to him, but only for the actions resulting therefrom. Ideas and beliefs are certainly not voluntary acts. They come to us—we hardly know how or whence, and once they have got possession of us we can not reject or change them at will.
Apart from Darwin's education in Christ's College, Cambridge, as compared with Wallace's self-education, the parallel between his intellectual tendencies and environment and those of Charles Darwin is extraordinary. They enjoyed a similar current of influence from men, from books and from nature. Thus the next turning point in his life was his meeting with Henry Walter Bates, through whom he acquired his zest for the wonders of insect life, which opened for the first time for him the zoological windows of nature. In a measure Bates waS to Wallace what the Rev. John S. Henslow had been to Darwin. It is noteworthy that the greater and most original part of his direct observations of nature were upon the adaptations of insects.
Darwin and Wallace fell under the spell of the same books, first and foremost those of Lyell, as noted above, then of Humboldt in his "Personal Narrative" (1814-18), of Robert Chambers in his "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" (1844), of Malthus in his "Essay on the Principle of Population" (1798).
It was, however, Darwin's own "Journal of Researches," published in 1845, and read by Wallace at the age of twenty-three, which determined him to invite Bates to accompany him on his journey to the Amazon and Rio Negro, which filled the four years 1848-52. In this wondrous equatorial expanse, like Darwin he was profoundly impressed with the forests, the butterflies and birds, and with his first meeting with man in an absolute state of nature. Bates, himself a naturalist of high order,[1] was closely observing the mimetic resemblances among insects to animate and inanimate objects and introducing Wallace to a field which he subsequently made his own. Bates remained several years after Wallace's departure, and published his classical memoir on mimicry in 1860-61. Wallace's own description of his South American experiences entitled "Narrative of Travels on the Amazon," published in 1853 when he was thirty years of age, does not display the ability of his later writings, and shows that his powers were slowly developing.
His eight years of travel between 1854 and 1862 in the Indo-Malay Islands, the Timor Group, Celebes, the Moluccas and the Papuan Group brought his powers to full maturity. It is apparent that his prolonged observations on the natives, the forests, the birds and mammals, and
- ↑ See his principal work, entitled "Naturalist on the River Amazons," 2 vols., 8vo, John Murray. London. 1863.
