Alfred Wallace | American Museum of Natural History

RARE COLLECTIONS OF DARWIN'S CONTEMPORARY
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
GO ON DISPLAY AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

EXHIBIT MARKS 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES,
SPURRED TO PUBLICATION BY WALLACE'S WORK ON EVOLUTION

Alfred Russel Wallace cabinet

© D. Finnin/AMNH

On the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work, a long-lost collections cabinet reportedly designed by and belonging to Alfred Russel Wallace—the influential naturalist and thinker whose independent insights and writings on evolution and natural selection spurred Darwin to finish On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—will go on display in the American Museum of Natural History's Grand Gallery. The beautifully-crafted rosewood cabinet and its contents, nearly two thousand sorted and labeled beetles, moths, and plants, offer a rare glimpse into a Victorian naturalist's process.

"When you see how and what specimens are laid out in this cabinet, the organizing mind of one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century is revealed," says David Grimaldi, Curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the Museum. "Wallace had a passion for collecting that helped him come to appreciate the variation within a species, an observation that helped both him and Darwin understand that unequal survival of offspring can lead to changes in populations over time, which is evolution."

"This beautiful collection provides an extraordinary picture of the kind of painstaking collecting, documentation, and study at the root of great scientific ideas like the theory of evolution through natural selection," says Michael Novacek, Provost of Science at the Museum. "The collection also brings to light the excitement of discovery of the world of nature that laid the groundwork for a scientific revolution during the Victorian Age."

A drawer of tropical butterflies

© R. Heggestad

Wallace, who lived from 1823 to 1913, was a British naturalist who explored the Amazon River Basin and the Malay Archipelago, or what is now Malaysia and Indonesia. The science of biogeography, or how groups of animals and plants are distributed, springs from his work. He defined the biological division within Indonesia that now bears his name, Wallace's Line, because he noticed that the biodiversity to the south was predominantly Australian in origin while the fauna and flora to the north had closer ties to Asia. But it is Wallace's letter from Ternate Island in 1858, sent from the field to Darwin, that is his most famous contribution to biology. In the letter, Wallace outlined his ideas about how variation within a species can lead to the formation of other species over time.

Darwin's reaction was immediate. His cryptic diary entry from that June, "Pigeons (interrupted)," which is posted online by the Darwin Manuscripts Project, shows that he turned all of his attention to completing his ideas about natural selection. An immediate flurry of letters followed. As Darwin wrote to geologist Charles Lyell, Wallace "has sent to me the enclosed [manuscript, …and] I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract!" Roughly two weeks after Darwin's receipt of the letter, a joint paper was read before The Linnean Society of London. Darwin's On the Origin was completed the following year and published on November 24, 1859.

A drawer of British butterflies

© R. Heggestad

The rosewood cabinet and its carefully arranged collection were purchased more than 40 years ago as unclaimed baggage in Philadelphia. The 26 drawers contain specimens that Wallace likely collected while in the tropics and in England: Morpho butterflies from Brazil, green jeweled beetles, a bowl of shells, and even several butterflies that are now extinct in the U.K. It is the only known personal collection attributed to Wallace that is fully intact, since most of his collections were sold for income. Specimens from a similar cabinet were sold to the Natural History Museum in London, but the specimens were removed so that Wallace's family could keep the other cabinet. The rediscovered cabinet, however, contains unusual specimens and mementos gathered before 1848, when Wallace set out for the Amazon. Two examples include a collection of beetle wings in a box from a pharmacy that had been near Wallace's home and a piece of cotton from the Manchester Botanical Garden. The cabinet was ultimately sold to Robert Heggestad in 1979.

"No one knows why it ended up in a Philadelphia customs warehouse. Wallace could have brought it with him when he lectured during his visit to the U.S. in 1886 and 1887, or he or his family could have sold it. It may have been lost in transit," says Grimaldi. "But what is interesting is that so many lines of evidence point to Wallace."

In addition to the links outlined above, such as the construction of the cabinet and the unusual mementos like beetle wings and cotton, the handwritten labels point directly to Wallace. According to experts hired by Heggestad, the handwriting is Wallace's. David Kohn, Director and General Editor of the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, agrees. "I inspected photographed specimen labels from this collection with known samples of Wallace's handwriting, and the evidence convinces me that they were written by the same person," says Kohn. "Wallace's livelihood was commercial collecting and surveying, and he depended on the neatness of his script writing. He had a very clear Victorian hand—unlike Huxley, Hooker, or Darwin."

A drawer of beetles and other insects

© R. Heggestad

The provenance of the collection's specimens also tie the cabinet closely to Wallace because most come from places that Wallace explored. The dates on the specimens correspond to the times and locations where he was conducting field work (U.K. before 1848; Brazil from 1848 to 1852; Indonesia/Malaysia from 1854 to 1862). As for the specimens from North America, Wallace might have acquired them during his U.S. visit. Specimens from additional localities such as China were probably obtained from other collectors.

The species themselves are referenced in Wallace's books and papers. For example, Wallace wrote that Papilio agamemnon is the best example of "local form, or variety…[which] is the first step in the transition from variety to species." Furthermore, the classification and arrangement of the specimens correlates with what a Victorian naturalist like Wallace would have created, and more recent changes to scientific names since the late 1800s are not reflected within the collection. Finally, the arrangement of pinned insect specimens appears original, since there are so few pin holes in the paper lining the bottoms of the drawers.

Grimaldi thinks that the collection was laid out in part as a didactic teaching piece. "Wallace came to the theory of natural selection by thinking about protective and warning coloration in animals, and by trying to understand the variation in geographical distributions of animals while in Indonesia," says Grimaldi. "I think that Wallace organized the specimens taxonomically and to display similar color patterns."