The great difficulty is to understand how, if one species was gradually changed into another,
there continued to be so many quite distinct species, so many which differed from their
nearest allies by slight yet perfectly definite and constant characters.Charles Darwin did not see Wallace’s ‘Sarawak Paper’ as either particularly
interesting or pointing to the evolution of species and wrote in the margins of his copy
‘nothing very new’ and ‘it all seems like creation to him’. However, in April 1856
Charles Lyell spent a few days at Down House and it was during this stay that Darwin
revealed the theory he had been quietly developing over the last eighteen years –
his theory of natural selection. Lyell, even though himself an orthodox creationist,
was more observant and warned Darwin that Wallace was heading towards this same
conclusion. In fact Wallace indirectly referred to Darwin when in his ‘Sarawak Paper’
he wrote of the importance of the study of islands and demanded why the variation of
the species found on the Galapagos had not received any sort of explanation:
Such phenomena as are exhibited by the Galapagos Islands, which contain little groups of
plants and animals peculiar to themselves, but most nearly allied to those of South America,
have not hitherto received any, even a conjectural explanation.Of course it was Charles Darwin who had famously described the Galapagos fauna
and flora. Unknown to Wallace, however, Darwin’s 230 page ‘Essay’ on the origin of
species remained locked in his desk drawer.
Wallace had spent almost fifteen months collecting in Sarawak and he returned to
Singapore in January 1856. He left his assistant Charles Allen behind as he was ‘of a
religious turn’ and had decided to train and teach at the Anglican Mission in Kuching.
However, in his place he recruited a fifteen-year-old Malay boy named Ali who had
already proved himself a good shot and a useful apprentice. In Singapore, Wallace
had to finalize all his specimens for shipment and he sent 5000 insects, including 1500
moths, numerous butterflies, as well as his orangutan skins and skeletons to Samuel
Stevens in London.
With no response from the scientific community regarding his ‘Sarawak Paper’,
Wallace decided to write directly to Charles Darwin in the hope of starting a long-
distance conversation about his ideas and perhaps even draw Darwin into a conjectural
explanation of his observations on the Galapagos Islands. It took many months for
Darwin to reply and even more months for his letter to reach Wallace, who was now
somewhere out in the islands and jungles of the Indonesian archipelago.
Alfred Russel Wallace – In Singapore and Borneo 135