Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/1101

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1084

WALLACE.

though only at the coat of great labour and expenditure, to shut up and clear out completely. Another, the Spa Fields Burial Grounds, ho was also the means of closing. His principal works on sanatory ques- tions generally, but chiefly on the subject of intramural interments, were the following: — "Gatherings from Graveyards : Particularly those of London ; with a Concise History of the Modes of Interment among Different Nations, from the Earliest Periods — and a detail of Dangerous and Fatal Results pro- duced by the Unwise and Revolting Custom of Inhuming the Dead in the Midst of the Living," 1839 ; "The Graveyards of London;" " Interment and Disinterment," 1843 ; " Burial Ground Incendiar- ism — ^the Last Fire in the ' Bone House' : in the Spa Fields Gol- gotha^ or the Minute Anatomy of Grave-Digg^g in London,** 1846 ; " A Series of Lectures on the Actual Condition of the Metropoli- tan Grave Yards/' 1846; "Prac- tical Suggestions for the Estab- lishment of National Extramural Cemeteries," 1849 ; " On the Past and Present State of Intramural Burying Places," 1851 ; and " Grave Reminiscences : Some Experiences of a Sanatory Reformer," 1875.

WALLACE, Alfred Russel, F.L.S., born at Usk, Monmouth- shire, Jan. 8, 1822, was educated at the Grammar School, Hertford, and articled with an elder brother as land surveyor and architect, but gave up this profession in order to travel and study nature. In 1848 he visited the Amazon with Mr. Bates. Returning in 1852, he pub- lished his " Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," and a small volume on " Palm Trees of the Amazon, and their Uses." In 185 i he visited the Malay Islands, where he remained eight years. He has since published " The Malay Archi- pelago," 2 vols., 2nd edit., 1869, and a volume of essays entitled I ' Contributions to the Theory of ,

I Natural Selection," 1870, as well as ' a large number of papers in the 'publications of the Linnaean, Zoo- logical, Ethnological, Anthropolo- gical, and Entomological Societies. In 1868 he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, and in 1870, the Gold Medal of the Sod^ de G^graphie of Paris. In 1875 he printed a small volume "On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism." His elaborate work, in two volumes, on "The Geographical Distribu- tion of Animals " was published in 1876, in which year he was presi- dent of the Biological Section at the meeting of the British Associa- tion at Glasgow. In 1878 he pub- lished a volume on "Tropical Nature," containing his latest views on the colours of natural objects, on sexual selection, the geogpraphical distribution of ani- mals and plants, and allied topics. In 1880 he published another im- portant work, "Island Life," in which the principles established in the " Geographical Distribution of Animals " are applied to explain in detail the phenomena presented by the faunas and floras of the chief islands of the globe, while a general solution is attempted of the difficalt problem of geological climates. Since then Mr. WaUace has turned his attention to social and political problems, and in 1882 published a volume on " Land Nationalisation, its Necessity and its Aims," in which he gives a sketch of the whole subject of land-tenure, and proposes a practical scheme of occupying ownership under the State in order to remedy the nume- rous evils of the present system which he has pointed out. To advocate this scheme a Land Nationalisation Society has been formed, of which Mr. Wallace is president. In 1881 he was awaked a Civil List pension of JB200 a year in recognition of the amount and value of his scientific work. The honorary de- gree of D.C.L, was conferred upon