down more or less systematically his ideas on various subjects that interested him. His first literary efforts all bear dates of the autumn and winter of 1843, when he was between nineteen and twenty years of age. One of his first productions was the rough sketch of a popular lecture on botany addressed to an audience supposed to be as ignorant as he was when he began his observation of the native flowers. A second of these early lectures was on the subject "The Advantages of Varied Knowledge," which he considered of interest chiefly as showing the bent of his mind at the time and indicating a disposition for discursive reading and study. He also wrote at this time on the manners and customs of the Welsh peasantry in Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, and put the matter in form for one of the London magazines, but it was declined.
These early and serious studies in botany, continuing for four years, prepared him for the plant wonders of the tropics. At the age of twenty-one he came to London. He afterward regarded his difficulty in obtaining employment as a great turning point in his career, "for otherwise,"' he writes, "it seems very unlikely that I should ever have undertaken what at that time seemed rather a wild scheme, a journey to the almost unknown forests of the Amazon in order to observe nature and make a living by collecting."
In his autobiographic volumes of 1905, "My Life, a Record of Events and Opinions," there is also an interesting sketch of his state of mind at this time.
I do not think that at this formative period I could be said to have shown special superiority in any of the higher mental faculties, but I possessed a strong desire to know the causes of things, a great love of beauty in form and color, and a considerable, but not excessive desire for order and arrangement in whatever I had to do. If I had one distinct mental faculty more prominent than another it was the power of correct reasoning from a review of the known facts in any case to the causes or laws which produced them, and also in detecting fallacies in the reasoning of other persons.
Elsewhere in his autobiography he observes that whatever reputation in science, literature and thought he may possess is the result of the organs of comparison, causality and order, with firmness, acquisitiveness, concentrativeness, constructiveness and wonder, all above the average, but none of them excessively developed, combined with a moderate faculty of language which
enables me to express my ideas and conclusions in writing though but imperfectly in speech. I feel, myself, how curiously and persistently these faculties have acted in various combinations to determine my tastes, disposition and actions.
Wallace shared Darwin's strong sentiment for justice as between man and man, and abhorrence of tyranny and unnecessary interference with the liberty of others. His retiring disposition enabled him to enjoy long periods of reflection, receptiveness and solitude, both at home
