The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

My last post discussed attempts which had been made to locate the house which Wallace lived in on the Indonesian island of Ternate, but it has occurred to me that some readers may not know what is so special about this house; so let me explain:-

Wallace made Ternate his base during the second half of his collecting expedition to the 'Malay Archipelago' and he rented a house there and lived in it on several occasions between early January 1858 and June/July 1861. In his book The Malay Archipelago he writes the following about the house:

"On the morning of the 8th of January, 1858, I arrived at Ternate, the fourth of a row of fine conical volcanic islands which skirt the west coast of the large and almost unknown island of Gilolo [Halmahera]. The largest and most perfectly conical mountain is Tidore, which is over four thousand feet high--Ternate being very nearly the same height, but with a more rounded and irregular summit. The town of Ternate is concealed from view till we enter between the two islands, when it is discovered stretching along the shore at the very base of the mountain. Its situation is fine, and there are grand views on every side. Close opposite is the rugged promontory and beautiful volcanic cone of Tidore; to the east is the long mountainous coast of Gilolo, terminated towards the north by a group of three lofty volcanic peaks, while immediately behind the town rises the huge mountain, sloping easily at first, and covered with thick groves of fruit trees, but soon becoming steeper, and furrowed with deep gullies. Almost to the summit, whence issue perpetually faint wreaths of smoke, it is clothed with vegetation, and looks calm and beautiful, although beneath are hidden fires which occasionally burst forth in lava-streams, but more frequently make their existence known by the earthquakes which have many times devastated the town.

I brought letters of introduction to Mr. Duivenboden, a native of Ternate, of an ancient Dutch family, but who was educated in England, and speaks our language perfectly. He was a very rich man, owned half the town, possessed many ships, and above a hundred slaves. He was, moreover, well educated, and fond of literature and science--a phenomenon in these regions. He was generally known as the king of Ternate, from his large property and great influence with the native Rajahs and their subjects. Through his assistance I obtained a house, rather ruinous, but well adapted to my purpose, being close to the town, yet with a free outlet to the country and the mountain. A few needful repairs were soon made, some bamboo furniture and other necessaries obtained, and, after a visit to the Resident and police magistrate, I found myself an inhabitant of the earthquake-tortured island of Ternate, and able to look about me and lay down the plan of my campaign for the ensuing year. I retained this house for three years, as I found it very convenient to have a place to return to after my voyages to the various islands of the Moluccas and New Guinea, where I could pack my collections, recruit my health, and make preparations for future journeys…

Floor plan of the Ternate house from The Malay Archipelago. Measurements are in feet.

A description of my house (the plan of which is here shown) will enable the reader to understand a very common mode of building in these islands. There is of course only one floor. The walls are of stone up to three feet high; on this are strong squared posts supporting the roof, everywhere except in the verandah filled in with the leaf-stems of the sago palm, fitted neatly in wooden framing. The floor is of stucco, and the ceilings are like the walls. The house is forty feet square, consists of four rooms, a hall, and two verandahs, and is surrounded by a wilderness of fruit-trees. A deep well supplied me with pure cold water--a great luxury in this climate. Five minutes’ walk down the road brought me to the market and the beach, while in the opposite direction there were no more European houses between me and the mountain. In this house I spent many happy days. Returning to it after a three or four months’ absence in some uncivilized region, I enjoyed the unwonted luxuries of milk and fresh bread, and regular supplies of fish and eggs, meat and vegetables, which were often sorely needed to restore my health and energy. I had ample space and convenience for unpacking, sorting, and arranging my treasures, and I had delightful walks in the suburbs of the town, or up the lower slopes of the mountain, when I desired a little exercise, or had time for collecting...

Just below my house is the fort, built by the Portuguese, below which is an open space to the beach, and beyond this the native town extends for about a mile to the north-east. About the centre of it is the palace of the Sultan, now a large untidy, half-ruinous building of stone."

 The crucial information which enables the house (or the site it was on) to be identified is therefore:-

1) That the structure and the floor plan are as Wallace described them.
2) There is a deep well in the garden (whether behind or to one side of the house he doesn't say).
3) The beach is five minutes walk away.
4) There is (or was) an old  Portuguese fort between the house and the beach.
5) The Sultan's palace is (or was) about half a mile to the north-east of the house.

John Wilson in his 2000 book The Forgotten Naturalist: In Search of Alfred Russel Wallace also dismisses what Ian Cowan (see last post: http://wallacefund.info/en/news-about-alfred-russel-wallaces-ternate-house) calls the "Sultan's House" as being a candidate, saying that it was "not quite in the right area, nor were the rooms the right size." Wilson goes on to say that the only fort in the neighbourhood is a Dutch one, Benteng Oranje, and he suggests that this was probably the fort Wallace mentioned - Wallace being mistaken in thinking that it was built by the Portuguese. After some discussion with local people Wilson found a house with a well in the garden which was situated "behind the old Dutch fort, not far from the market and the beach". This had been built 50 years before by a Mr Aquil on an empty plot of land and Wilson wondered whether Wallace's house might once have stood there. It will be interesting to learn whether the plot recently identified on Ternate as being the site of Wallace's house is this one.

The main reason the house is legendary and is worth turning into a museum, is that Wallace was living there when he posted his famous letter and his essay on natural selection to Charles Darwin on the 9th March 1858. Note that although Wallace’s essay was marked as having being written on Ternate in February 1858, this cannot have been the case since Wallace’s unpublished Malay Field Journal in the Linnean Society of London shows that he was on Gilolo [Halmahera] during the whole of February, only returning to the neighbouring island of Ternate on 1 March. It is probable that he wrote “Ternate” on the essay simply because this was the island where he had his base, and because it was his postal address. Alternatively, he got the month wrong and should have written “March” instead of “February.” However, this would have been a curious error to make as he wrote a letter to Frederick Bates which he dated 2nd March 1858 (original in The Natural History Museum, London, catalogue number WP1/3/42), and which was posted back to Britain on the same mail ship as his Ternate Essay. Why he never corrected either the date or the place of his discovery in his published accounts of this event is curious. For more details about Wallace's discovery of natural selection see http://wallacefund.info/en/biography-wallace

POSTSCRIPT

After the above was written I discovered that "Benteng Oranje" (which has also been called Fort Oranje, Fort Orange or Castle Orange) is mentioned in Wallace's 1879 book Australasia. In this book it says that the fort was reputed to have been built on "the foundations of an old Portuguese structure", which may account for why Wallace called it a "Portuguese fort".

Ian Cowan of Turner, ACT, Australia recently sent me an interesting unpublished essay about the search for Wallace's famous house on the Indonesian island of Ternate - the house in which Wallace was living when he posted his essay describing his independent discovery of natural selection to Charles Darwin in 1858. Ian's essay follows:-

The National Museum of Australia is currently presenting the Darwin exhibition prepared by the American Museum of Natural History. Very enjoyable it is too. However, I was taken aback to see, in the fairly brief section about the Wallace connection, a photograph of what is stated to be “Wallace’s house” in Ternate. I am quite certain it is not the house Wallace occupied, and think it probable that “his” house no longer exists. Nevertheless “Wallace’s House” continues to be rediscovered from time to time. Each time it turns out to be a house I photographed in 1995, and which the person in charge of the Tourist Bureau in Kota Ternate,  Sam, assured me was the house Wallace occupied.

It was with disappointment that I concluded, after taking some measurements and comparing them with the floor plan Wallace provides in The Malay Archipelago, that Sam was mistaken. Not only were the dimensions inconsistent, but so also was the structure. I continued to search for the real Wallace house, with the aid of a growing band of assistants, including a teacher, a man from the local radio station, and two or three village elders. We were not successful, and the search was abandoned after a few days. During this period, somebody told me that the house I was first shown had originally been built for a member of the Sultan’s family. It did appear to me that the house, though very dilapidated, may once have been rather fine. Particularly striking was the row of eight masonry pillars supporting the roof of the front verandah. I feel sure Wallace would have made note of this had he lived there; after all he goes to the trouble of mentioning the “strong squared posts supporting the roof.” I found no such posts, incidentally.

Two views of the Ternate house reputed to be the one Wallace lived in. 1995. Copyright Ian Cowan.

Though I was quite certain that the house Sam had shown me was not the house Wallace occupied it is a pity that I neglected to note down the measurements that would convince others of my conclusion. One can estimate from the number and spacing of the pillars that the length: width ratio of the verandah is about 7 whereas Wallace gives it as 4. But such observations are hardly sufficient to dissuade anyone bent on identifying the house as Wallace’s.

Fortunately in 1997 my observations about the so-called “Wallace House” were confirmed  by Tim Severin in The Spice Islands Voyage. In Search of Wallace (London: Little, Brown and Company). He remarks that, in the general area he identified as that in which Wallace’s house was situated, “there are only a dozen or so houses which retain the vernacular architecture Wallace describes. However, this has not discouraged the town authorities from designating one of the few remaining old houses as ’Wallace’s House’. It has almost the same floor plan, a well in the garden, and is of about the right vintage, with a picturesque tumbled-in thatched roof. But it is much too large and substantial, with outside colonnades, to have been Wallace’s rather more modest house, and its stone walls extend to the ceiling. In fact it has survived because it was once an over-spill residence for members of the Sultan’s family.” The sketch Severin provides shows that he is writing about the house I photographed.

John G. Wilson shows a photograph of the same house in his book The Forgotten Naturalist. In Search of Alfred Russel Wallace (Victoria: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2000). It had been identified by someone (Sam?) in the Tourist Department as Wallace’s House. Wilson remarks of it, “While the arrangement of the rooms was similar to that described by Wallace, it was a little large and too well constructed, with stone pillars in the front and too much stone altogether”. However, a year later an article  by Gerard Jacobs entitled "The survival of the fittest - Into the footsteps of Alfred Wallace" was published (to read it go to http://www.gulag.nl/artikelen/engelswallace.html). The opening sentence reads "Travelling in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace through Indonesia, a country torn by civil strife and corruption, Gerard Jacobs discovers on the Moluccan island of Ternate the house where young Alfred Wallace formulated the theory of evolution and the priciple of 'the survival of the fittest'." This text is followed by yet another photograph of what I shall now call the “Sultan’s House”, showing that it had suffered greatly in the years since I was there. Evidently Sam had had no success at all in attracting funds.

Next I noticed in Wallace News, www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/news.htm, the following item, dated 2005:

"Correspondent Alexander Davey reports that the house Wallace stayed in at Ternate apparently still exists, and that he is interested in receiving advice on possible ways to proceed in the direction of getting it restored/renovated into a Wallace museum facility."

I was delighted to get a very pleasant response from Davey to an enquiry by me in which he writes:

"I was living in Ternate a few years ago and thought that maybe I had found Wallace's house but having read the book by an author whose name I don't have with me at the moment (entitled 'In Wallace's Footsteps' or similar) where the author mentions the house I also saw and explains why it couldn't be Wallace's house I realised that it was not his house but a house of similar dimensions and period. I can't exactly remember but I believe that Wallace described the walls as being entirely non-stone whereas the house I saw is half stone...

Some locals including the Sultan describe this surviving house as the Wallace house but I think it is just wishful thinking on their part. When I left Ternate I think the local government was 'renovating' it to serve as a museum of some kind.

If this house were renovated authentically and sensitively I do think it would serve well as a Wallace museum. Considering his place in history, it is remarkable that so little is made of Ternate as the home or at least the North Moluccas as the home province of the Ternate Letter (which I understand was actually most likely written in Halmahera). There are some Dutch war cemeteries in Indonesia which are very well maintained by foreign-run foundations and this might be a good model for a Wallace museum, possibly working in collaboration with Indonesian academic institutions."
 
Thus it seems Davey has been drawn to the same conclusion as I through the observations of Severin or Wilson. But despite all this evidence, Wallace’s house has been resurrected yet again. The Alfred Russel Wallace Website, http://wallacefund.info/en/ternate-honors-wallace, recently reproduced “the following very interesting article”:

Ternate to build Wallace observatory

Andi Hajramurni and Tifa Asrianti,
The Jakarta Post, Makassar, South Sulawesi, Fri, 12/12/2008

To honor British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace's achievements in science, the municipality of Ternate, North Maluku, will build a monument and observatory in his name.

Ternate mayor Syamsir Andili said in Makassar on Thursday that his administration would reconstruct Wallace's former home into a monument. The house, where Wallace lived for four years, was still in its original condition and the owner had agreed to the plans. Ternate will also rename a street in their town municipality of Ternate, North Maluku, Jalan Alfred Russel Wallace.

“We also plan to build a one-hectare observatory that will exhibit plants and animals, the main focus of Wallace's studies. We will begin acquiring the land next year," he said at the opening of the four-day International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar.

Elsewhere on the Website, George Beccaloni, its founder, remarks, “I would be very interested to know what evidence there is that this is the actual house that Wallace lived in whilst in Ternate since many people have tried to find it in the past and have failed.”

Just so. Many will be delighted (including Sam, Davey, and myself) if plans for a Wallace Museum in Ternate come to fruition. And yes indeed, the “Sultan’s House”, had it been taken care of, could have provided a felicitous site. But the notion that it (if it be the house the Mayor of Kota Ternate is referring to) was once inhabited by Wallace would provide a shaky foundation.

I sent Ian's essay to Prof. Sangkot Marzuki, President of the Indonesian Academy of Science and prime mover behind the conference on Wallace and Wallacea which took place  in Makassar in December 2008. He replied:

Thank you for sending me Ian Cowan's manuscript on Alfred Russel Wallace's house in Ternate.  I am very pleased indeed that the initiative of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences and The Wallacea Foundation (TWF)  to raise awareness of Alfred Russel Wallace's (AWR) role in the discovery of the theory of evolution, as a father of modern  biogeography, and in biological conservation has resulted in such a response in Indonesia and internationally.  The plan to restore the house in Ternate was conceived as part of a pre-conference on the "Letter from Ternate" in Ternate on the 3 December, which preceded the conference in Makassar on "Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea" on 10-13 December 2008.  I was present at the pre-conference and a main signatory to the "Ternate Declaration" that, among other things, mentioned the restoration of AWR's house, the naming of its street as Jalan Alfred Russel Wallace, and the development of a biodiversity observatory.

The Jakarta Post, as quoted in Ian Cowan's article, is wrong.  I am very sure that the Mayor of Ternate, Syamsir Andili, would not have said that "The house, where Wallace lived for four years, was still in its original condition".  On the contrary, ARW's original  house is no longer there, but the location had been very carefully traced from AWR's description in The Malay Archipelago and an old map of Ternate of the period, and further deduced and confirmed by interviews with elderly people living in the neighborhood, who still have the memory of the original house.  A well that fits AWR's description in The Malay Archipelago is found at the back of the existing house.

The City of Ternate is currently building a monument in front of the house.  The future plan is to demolish the existing house, hopefully find the foundation of the original house (which will establish whether it fits the floor plan in The Malay Archipelago), and rebuild AWR's house following the floor plan and the description in The Malay Archipelago, as well as using similar houses still standing in Ternate as models.

It is this rebuild house which will be used to house an Alfred Russel Wallace and The Wallacea museum (as distinct from the Wallacea Biodiversity Observatory, which will be build elsewhere as a separate albeit related project).

The City of Ternate is in the process of purchasing the house, as well as clearing the surrounding land from several other houses. The Mayor of Ternate has invited TWF to be involved a major way in its various Wallace and Wallacea initiatives,  and one of our priorities early in 2009 is to visit Ternate again to discuss details.  Fortunately, it is much easier to reach Ternate today.  In addition to a daily Merpati filigt from Makassar, it is also possible to fly there in a small plane from Menado (which is recommended by the locals).  It is even possible to fly to Ternate directly from Jakarta, if you do not mind flying long distance (about three hours) with Batavia Air instead of Garuda.

The Wallace Memorial Fund certainly looks forward with great interest to future developments in Ternate. The Fund will of course, help in any way it can with establishing the museum to Wallace there.

The Wallace Fund have just finished creating a CafePress shop with a range of exciting products featuring Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin (see http://www.cafepress.com/WallaceFund and the link to the shop on the left hand side of the Wallace Website). Items include mugs, cards, printed tiles, a framed photograph of Wallace, and a wide selection of clothing. Any profits will go directly to The Wallace Fund and will be used to finance future projects, so please show your support and buy lots of goodies today!

The photo of Wallace featured on some of the products was copied from an original which is owned by the Wallace family, whilst the signatures of Wallace and Darwin were digitised from originals owned by George Beccaloni. The beautiful watercolour painting of Wallace's Flying Frog (Rhacophorus nigropalmatus), which is reproduced on one of the greetings cards, was painted by Wallace himself at the Simunjon coalworks, Sarawak, Borneo, in 1855. The original was in a private collection, but regretably it may now be lost! This is therefore a rare opportunity to buy a reproduction of this wonderful image - hurry whilst stocks last!!

Also check out Darwin Designs, my shop which sells products featuring Charles Darwin - see http://www.cafepress.com/DarwinDesigns/

These are some of the designs in the The Wallace Fund shop:

Design for mug - images appear on either side of the mug.

Clothing design number 1.

Clothing design number 2.

Wallace's painting of the flying frog from Sarawak featured on one of the greeting cards.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Wallace's independent discovery of evolution by natural selection whilst on the Indonesian island of Gilolo (Halmahera) [not Ternate!] in February 1858, the Wallace Fund is currently producing a limited number of replicas (around 20) of an attractive 55 cm diameter medallion or plaque featuring a side profile of Wallace's head. This is the only sculpture of Wallace known to be made of him whilst he was still alive. The Fund plans to donate the plaques to a wide variety of organisations worldwide which have an interest in Wallace:- ranging from the small museum at his birthplace in Usk, Wales; to the Royal Geographical Society of London (which facilitated his passage out to the Malay Archipelago); to organisations in the countries where Wallace collected natural history specimens (Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia).

The original plaque is owned by The Natural History Museum (London) (see http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/comp.php?img=49707&frm=med&search=alfred%20wallace) and is made of painted plaster, which was slightly damaged and expertly repaired a long time ago. The replicas are being made from Araldite epoxy resin with added bronze powder, cast from a silicone rubber mould of the original which the NHM Library kindly gave the Fund permission to make. Due to the fragile nature of the original plaque it is very unlikely that the NHM will allow another mould to be made in the future.

The plaque's history

An inscription on the plaque shows that it was made in 1914 by the well known sculptor Albert Bruce-Joy (1842-1924), who made several different portrait medallions of Wallace in a variety of materials, the earliest known examples of which date from 1906 (see http://wallacefund.info/paintings-and-sculptures). The NHM plaque is very similar to the memorial medallion of Wallace in white marble made by Bruce-Joy which is in Westminster Abbey, London (see http://wallacefund.info/fixed-monuments), except that it has a different border around it. Bruce-Joy based his portrait of Wallace on photographs and on a live sitting with the great man, possibly in 1897 when Wallace was living in Parkstone, Dorset. Thackery (1995) states that the provenance of the NHM's plaque is unknown, but that it has been in the Museum since at least 1931. Curiously the NHM also has plaster medallions of Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley which both have the same border design as the Wallace plaque (http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?search=darwin200&getprev=49651). The Darwin plaque is exactly the same size as the Wallace one and the Huxley plaque is 4 cm smaller in diameter. Both plaques were made by the sculptor Frank Bowcher (1864-1938) - the Huxley plaque was made in 1902 (presented to the NHM in 1931), and Thackery (1995) says that the Darwin one was made before 1920 and given by Bowcher to B. B. Woodward of the Museum in 1920. Why and for whom the plaques were originally produced is currently a mystery.

Funders of the project

George Beccaloni with one of the replicas

The silicone mould of the plaque cost £540 to produce and this was paid for by donations from Prof. Charles Smith (http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index.html) and the Bantam Charitable Trust (Trustees Michèle and Chris Kohler). Plaque replicas cost £130 each to make and a generous grant from the Royal Entomological Society (http://www.royensoc.co.uk) has paid for seven of them (Wallace was a past President of the RES). The cost of the remaining plaques (minus the cost of having the mould made) has been borne by the recipients.

Recipients of the replicas

The Fund will present replica plaques to a number of organisations in the UK which have a strong interest in, or connection to Wallace. In addition the Fund will give one or two replicas to each of the countries where Wallace collected specimens and did fieldwork i.e. Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. A number of other organisations with an interest in Wallace are purchasing plaques.

UK organisations which the Fund is donating plaques to:

1) The Royal Entomological Society (http://www.royensoc.co.uk)
2) The Royal Geographical Society (http://www.rgs.org/HomePage.htm)
3) The Natural History Museum, London (http://www.nhm.ac.uk)

Overseas organisations which the Fund is donating plaques to:

4 & 5) Brazil - INPA, Manaus (http://www.inpa.gov.br) and Museu Goeldi, Belém (http://www.museu-goeldi.br)

6) Singapore - Wallace Education Centre, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (see http://wallacefund.info/bukit-timah-nature-reserve-singapore)

7) Malaysia - The Sarawak Museum? (http://www.museum.sarawak.gov.my/indexeng.htm)

8 & 9) Indonesia - Bogor Botanic Garden, Java (http://www.bogor.indo.net.id/kri/a.htm) and possibly the proposed Wallace Museum in Ternate

Organisations which are receiving subsidised plaques:

10) Hertford Museum, Hertford: http://www.hertfordmuseum.org [purchased by the Richard Hale Association - http://www.richard-hale-association.org.uk]

11) Thurrock Museum, Grays, Essex: http://www.thurrock.gov.uk/heritage/museum/ [purchased by Thurrock Council]

12) Broadstone Public Library, Broadstone, Dorset: http://www.broadstone.net/community/library.htm [purchased by Broadstone Resident's Association]

13) University Of Glamorgan, Wales: http://www.glam.ac.uk [purchased by the University]

14) Usk Rural Life Museum, Usk, Wales: http://www.uskmuseum.org.uk [purchased by the Usk Civic Society]

The only condition the Wallace Fund makes for receiving a plaque is that it is put on permanent public display and that a notice is hung beside it stating what it is and why and when it was presented.

One plaque to give away!

The Wallace Fund has one plaque to give away to a public organisation somewhere in the world which has an especial interest in Wallace's life and work. The organisation will have to guarantee that the plaque will be put on permanent public display. Applications should be sent to George Beccaloni [CLICK HERE] for consideration by Fund members. The deadline is the 31st January 2009.

Reference

Thackray, J. C. A. (1995). A catalogue of portraits, paintings and sculpture at the Natural History Museum, London. (Historical Studies in the Life and Earth Sciences No. 3). Mansell, London. 70pp.

On Saturday 22nd November 2008 the Scientific and Medical Network (http://www.scimednet.org/) organised a conference at the Linnean Society of London on the life and work of Alfred Russel Wallace, in order to commemorate the 150th anniversary this year of Wallace's independent discovery of evolution by natural selection (see http://www.scimednet.org/conference_pages/08_Wallace_conference.htm).

Aubrey Manning, Chair of the meeting.

The conference also served as the launch for the book I co-edited with Charles Smith i.e. Natural selection and beyond: The intellectual legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace (see http://wallacefund.info/new-book-about-wallace-published). Forty copies of the book were for sale and all sold out on the day!

The original idea of the conference was conceived by David Lorimer of the SMN and Charla Devereux of the SMN did a lot of the organisation of it. About 70-80 people attended, including four who flew over from the USA especially for the occasion. Comedian Bill Bailey also came along to do research for a show he is planning about Wallace next year (see a photo of him below).

The meeting was introduced and chaired by Prof. Aubrey Manning (University of Edinburgh), presenter of the BBC's acclaimed documentary series Earth Story, and five other speakers gave talks on topics ranging from the events surrounding Wallace's discovery of natural selection, to his contributions to the economics. The talks were recorded for the SMN by Martin Redfern (senior producer in the BBC Radio Science Unit) and Martin and the SMN have kindly allowed the Wallace Fund to put copies of the sound files on this website. The talks are mp3 files of around 20MB each and you can download them by right clicking a link below and saving the file to your hard drive. They can then be played using any audio player (e.g. RealPlayer - http://uk.real.com/player/win/).

THE TALKS

Aubrey Manning: Introduction, followed by Peter Raby: Alfred Russel Wallace: The Evolution of an Unforgotten Naturalist [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

George Beccaloni: Wallace, Darwin and the Discovery of Natural Selection [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

Roy Davies: Wallace, Darwin and the Discovery of Natural Selection - a New Interpretation of the Events [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

Charles Smith: Wallace and Final Causes: Spiritualism, Evolution, and Beyond [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

David Collard: Alfred Russel Wallace as a Social Reformer [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

The DISCUSSION [RIGHT CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD]

THE SPEAKERS
(Photos copyright of Jan Beccaloni)

Professor Aubrey Manning, OBE, FRSE is Emeritus Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh and has presented numerous BBC television and radio programmes on natural history including BBC2's Earth Story and Talking Landscapes. Most recently he could be heard on Radio 4 series such as The Sounds of Life, which attempted to recreate the first sounds heard on earth and explored natural sounds ranging from the seabed to the jungle, and The Rules of Life which attempts to get across the way natural selection operates at all stages of an animal's life history. He has been Chairman of the Scottish Wildlife Trust and a Trustee of the National Museums of Scotland and Project Wallacea.	Dr. Peter Raby has lectured in Drama and English at Homerton College , Cambridge for thirty years. His books include Fair Ophelia - a life of Harriet Smithson Berlioz - studies of Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, biographies of Samuel Butler and Alfred Russel Wallace, and Bright Paradise, a book about Victorian scientific travellers. He is the editor of two Cambridge Companions, on Wilde and Pinter, and has written extensively on modern drama and theatre. He is currently working on a new study of Wilde, and on an expanded second edition of the Cambridge Companion to Pinter (November 2009).
Dr. George W. Beccaloni is an evolutionary biologist/entomologist who is currently the curator of grasshoppers, cockroaches and related insects at The Natural History Museum, London. George founded the A. R.Wallace Memorial Fund which has restored Wallace’s grave in Broadstone, Dorset, and has erected monuments to commemorate him at his birthplace and elsewhere. He played a key role in helping the NHM acquire an important collection of Wallace’s manuscripts, books and insect specimens from his surviving family in 2002. He is co-editor of Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace.	Roy Davies - In a BBC career spanning 30 years, Roy Davies wrote, produced and directed many acclaimed programmes for the BBC2 archaeology and history series Chronicle. In his seven years as editor of the history series Timewatch he commissioned ground-breaking investigative documentaries which challenged popular historical beliefs. His final position at the BBC before retiring in 1995 was as Head of Factual Programmes for BBC Wales. He is now a visiting lecturer in screenwriting at the London College of Communication, part of London 's University of the Arts.
Professor Charles H. Smith is Science Librarian and Professor of Library Public Services at Western Kentucky University in the U.S.A. Charles is primarily a biogeographer by training, and has published research in that field, history of science, library science, bibliography, and systems theory. His books include Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings, Biodiversity Studies: A Bibliographic Review, and the co-edited Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. He has also created and maintains a dozen free access informational websites on subjects ranging from music to biogeography, including The Alfred Russel Wallace Page.	Professor David Collard - After a first class honours in the Economics Tripos at Cambridge in 1960 David Collard took up lectureships at the Universities of Wales and Bristol . In 1978 he was appointed to the Chair of Economics at the University of Bath where he has been pro-Vice-Chancellor and is now Professor Emeritus. His main interests are in welfare economics and the history of economics and he has written extensively on Malthus, Bentham, Pigou, Marshall, Hicks and other leading economists. He is currently working on the problem of choice across the generations.

OTHER PHOTOS
(all copyright Jan Beccaloni)

The speakers and audience in the meetings room of the Linnean Society of London.

David Collard (left), Aubrey Manning (centre) and George Beccaloni (right). Aubrey is sitting on the Linnean President's chair - the same chair which would have been used at the famous meeting of 1858.

George with comedian Bill Bailey.

The following very interesting article was published in The Jakarta Post today (see http://old.thejakartapost.com/detailnational.asp?fileid=20081212.H04&irec=4):

Ternate to build Wallace observatory
Andi Hajramurni and Tifa Asrianti, The Jakarta Post, Makassar, South Sulawesi

To honor British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace's achievements in science, the municipality of Ternate, North Maluku, will build a monument and observatory in his name.

Ternate mayor Syamsir Andili said in Makassar on Thursday that his administration would reconstruct Wallace's former home into a monument. The house, where Wallace lived for four years, was still in its original condition and the owner had agreed to the plans. Ternate will also rename a street in their town Jalan Alfred Russel Wallace.

"We also plan to build a one-hectare observatory that will exhibit plants and animals, the main focus of Wallace's studies. We will begin acquiring the land next year," he said at the opening of the four-day International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar.

In 1858, Wallace inspired Charles Darwin to write the natural selection theory after he sent Darwin a letter detailing his findings in Ternate. The letter, attached to his essay On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, outlined the mechanics of the evolutionary divergence of certain species due to environmental pressures.

While Darwin became exceedingly famous and has been dubbed the father of evolution, Wallace has remained largely unknown.

Syamsir hoped the research and science institutions nationwide would help with the construction of the observatory.

Sangkot Marzuki, president of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI), supported the idea.

"Since it was Wallace's home, I am sure the area has many interesting and unique plants and animals," he said.

Djoko Iskandar, a lecturer at the Bandung Institute of Technology School of Life Sciences and Technology, said an observatory should be close to natural resources.

"The (Ternate) administration should establish whether the surrounding environment is in a good condition before constructing the observatory," he said.

South Sulawesi Deputy Governor Agus Arifin Nu'mang said scientists should investigate Wallaces' theories on evolution, so significant that a region in Central Indonesia was named Wallacea after him, to continue his legacy. Their work would also support The Wallacea Research and Development Foundation, an organization dedicated to the Wallacea region, he said.

He further encouraged researchers to join the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) in studying the vast plant and animal species waiting to be discovered in the region.

"Wallace's discoveries paved the way for important historical and scientific work to be rediscovered. Sulawesi and its satellite islands have distinctly unique flora and fauna which we need to sustain for the sake of the nation," he said.

Recent Wallace events in Indonesia

The international conference on Wallace and Wallacea being held in Makassar, Sulawesi from the 10th to the 13th December kicks off today (see http://wallacefund.info/reminder-conference-wallace-wallacea) and there is a nice article about it in The Jakarta Post - http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/12/10/scientists-meet-push-wallace-darwindom.html

Dr Peggie Djunijanti, tells me that the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI) and the local government of the Indonesian island of Ternate held a pre-symposium event in Ternate on the 2nd and 3rd of December. Speakers included a local historian, a lecturer, the city mayor and Dr Djunijanti (who is a researcher at the LIPI). The event resulted in the Declaration of Ternate (which will be read at the Makassar conference), and in order to honor Wallace, the mayor changed the name of the street where Wallace lived from Jalan Nuri to Jalan Alfred Russel Wallace. The cornerstone for a monument was put in front of the house where Wallace lived. I would be very interested to know what evidence there is that this is the actual house that Wallace lived in whilst in Ternate since many people have tried to find it in the past and have failed.

TEMPO Interactive (http://www.tempointeractive.com/hg/nasional/2008/12/09/brk,20081209-150306,uk.html) reports that in addition to the above an area of 50 – 100 hectares in Jailolo is being developed into the Wallacea Conservation Centre. LIPI is also building a Wallacea nature "observatorium" in Sasa, South Ternate. This nature center will be an expansion of LIPI's marine research office in Ternate.

Launch of Wallace book in Singapore

The Earl of Cranbrook, who wrote the Preface to the recently published book I co-edited with Charles Smith, Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace, informs me that:-

"The Singapore launch of "Natural Selection and Beyond" was a great success. It was held at a very appropriate location, the Singapore Science Centre, and attended by a good crowd. I think Oxford told me that they had 40 copies, or maybe 70 -- at any rate, a long queue formed and I signed valiantly on behalf of the authors, until only 3 remained unsold. These, too, I signed  for prospective buyers."

The Earl of Cranbrook kindly organised this book launch and gave the keynote speech (see http://wallacefund.info/natural-selection-and-beyond-book-launches). There is a nice article about the book launch on the following website: http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2008/11/a-signature-event.html

Natural selection and beyond: The intellectual legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace, a 507 page book Charles Smith and I co-edited, was published by Oxford University Press last week, and officially launched at a one day conference on Wallace at the Linnean Society of London on Saturday 22nd November (see http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2008/november/new-book-explores-wallaces-legacy.html). The full citation is: Smith, C. H. & Beccaloni, G. [Eds.] 2008. Natural selection and beyond: The intellectual legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, xxv + 482 pp., 14 colour and 32 B&W figures, 2 tables.

The book provides an authoritative assessment of how Wallace's many contributions to the diverse range of subjects which interested him have stood the test of time. Since it would be impossible for any one person to do this we asked experts in each subject to write chapters which critically examined  the ideas Wallace contributed to their particular field. Experts who authored chapters include Dr Steven J. Dick (the Chief Historian of NASA), Darwin scholar Prof. James Moore, Wallace biographer Prof. Peter Raby, plus many others!

The publisher's blurb about the book is as follows:

"Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was one of the late nineteenth century's most potent intellectual forces. His link to Darwin as co-discoverer of the principle of natural selection alone would have secured him a place in history, but he went on to complete work entitling him to recognition as the 'father' of zoogeography, as a pioneer in the field of astrobiology, and as an important contributor to subjects as far-ranging as glaciology, land reform, anthropology and ethnography, and epidemiology. Beyond this, many are coming to regard Wallace as the pre-eminent field biologist, collector, and naturalist of tropical regions. Add to that the fact that he was a vocal supporter of spiritualism, socialism, and the rights of the ordinary person, and it quickly becomes apparent that Wallace was a man of extraordinary breadth of attention. Yet his work in many of these areas is still not well known, and still less recognized is his relevance to current day research almost 100 years after his death.

This rich collection of writings by more than twenty historians and scientists reviews and reflects on the work that made Wallace a famous man in his own time, and a figure of extraordinary influence and continuing interest today."

The retail price of the book in the UK is £30 ($70 in the USA), and copies are available from Amazon and from bookshops such as Waterstones.

To see Janet Browne's and David Quammen's comments about the book CLICK HERE and zoom in.

Charles Smith (left) & George Beccaloni (right) with Natural Selection and Beyond in November 2008. Copyright Jan Beccaloni.

List of the chapters and other contributed sections in the book:

Foreword - Peter Bowler
Preface - Earl of Cranbrook
Introduction - Charles Smith & George Beccaloni

1. Homes Sweet Homes: A Biographical Tour of Wallace’s Many Places of Residence - George Beccaloni

PART I. IN THE WORLD OF NATURE
2. ‘‘Ardent Beetle-Hunters’’: Natural History, Collecting, and the Theory of Evolution - Andrew Berry
3. Theory and Practice in the Field: Wallace’s Work in Natural History (1844–1858) - Melinda Bonnie Fagan
4. Wallace’s Annotated Copy of the Darwin-Wallace Paper on Natural Selection - George Beccaloni
5. Wallace and the Species Concept of the Early Darwinians - James Mallet
6. Direct Selection for Reproductive Isolation: The Wallace Effect and Reinforcement - Norman A. Johnson
7. The Colours of Animals: From Wallace to the Present Day. I. Cryptic Coloration. - Tim Caro, Sami Merilaita & Martin Stevens
8. The Colours of Animals: From Wallace to the Present Day. II. Conspicuous Coloration - Tim Caro, Geoffrey Hill, Leena Lindstrçm & Michael Speed
9. Alfred Russel Wallace, Biogeographer - Bernard Michaux
10. Wallace and the Great Ice Age - Keith Tinkler
11. Wallace, Conservation, and Sustainable Development - Sandra Knapp

PART II. IN THE WORLD OF MAN, AND WORLDS BEYOND
12. The ‘‘Finest Butterfly in the World?’’: Wallace and His Literary Legacy - Peter Raby
13. Wallace and Owenism - Gregory Claeys
14. Wallace, Women, and Eugenics - Diane B. Paul
15. Out of ‘‘the Limbo of ‘Unpractical Politics’ ’’: The Origins and Essence of Wallace’s Advocacy of Land Nationalization - David A. Stack
16. Alfred Russel Wallace and Anti-Vaccinationism in the Late Victorian Cultural Context, 1870-1907 - Martin Fichman
17. The Universe and Alfred Russel Wallace - Steven J. Dick
18. Wallace’s Unfinished Business - Charles H. Smith
19. Wallace in Wonderland - James Moore
20. Wallace’s Dilemmas: The Laws of Nature and the Human Spirit - Ted Benton
21. Wallace, Spiritualism, and Beyond: ‘‘Change,’’ or ‘‘No Change’’? - Charles H. Smith

An excellent feature article about Wallace has just been published in the December issue of National Geographic Magazine, which is now for sale in the shops (in the USA at least). "The Man Who Wasn't Darwin" has text by the acclaimed science writer David Quammen and images by Robert Clark, a much published National Geographic photographer. The text and a few of the images are available online here:- http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/wallace/quammen-text

David and Robert both came over to the UK to work with me on this article in March and I spent several days with each of them. When the article was being edited I spent a lot of time checking the facts in the text and the information on the map illustrating Wallace's Line. I was very, very impressed by how thoroughly NGM check every single fact they print.

National Geographic Magazine has a worldwide circulation in thirty-two language editions of nearly nine million copies, and more than fifty million people read the magazine every month. That's a lot of people who are soon going to find out about Wallace - many of them for the first time!

Wallace called "flying" frogs "very interesting to Darwinians." They showed how webbed feet for swimming had been adapted for gliding.

Fifty-two of UK artist Fred Langford Edwards' striking images of Wallace's drawings, notebook pages and animal specimens from his epic expedition to the 'Malay Archipelago' (Indonesia and Malaysia) will go on display at the upmarket Plaza Senayan shopping mall in south Jakarta (Java, Indonesia) from the 19th until the 30th of November 2008. They will be accompanied by a smaller selection of images taken by National Geographic Indonesia photographers. The captions for Fred's images were written by yours truly:- I am the scientific collaborator on his Wellcome Trust funded project "Alfred Russel Wallace: The Forgotten Evolutionist", which aims to explore the life, ideas, and surviving collections of Wallace, and the physical hardships he endured during his travels. Generous sponsorship from David J. S. Hallmark (UK representative of The Wallacea Foundation of Indonesia) enabled three sets of prints to be made. It is planned that the two duplicate sets will be displayed in Geneva and Paris (more details when I have them).

The Jakarta exhibition is entitled "Letter from Ternate" and it commemorates the 150th anniversary this year of Wallace's independent discovery of natural selection in Indonesia (he wrote an essay detailing his idea which he posted to Charles Darwin from Ternate, Indonesia in March 1858). The exhibition is being organised by the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI), National Geographic Indonesia, The Wallacea Foundation, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and Conservation International Indonesia. The driving forces behind it are Prof Sangkot Marzuki (Director of the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology), Ms Tuti Hadiputranto (founding partner of Hadiputranto, Hadinoto & Partners (HHP)) and David Hallmark (UK). Between the 10th and 13th of December the exhibition will be on show at the "Letter from Ternate" conference in Makassar, Sulawesi, Indonesia (see http://wallacefund.info/conference-alfred-russel-wallace-wallacea-makassar-indonesia), and after the conference it may move to other venues in Indonesia.