![]() ![]() The life of wild animals is a struggle for existence and the weakest and least perfectly organised must always succumb. In it, he wrote this, which must have astonished Darwin: It contained a twenty page summary of the idea Wallace had had during his fever. However, a year later, when Darwin was two-thirds of the way through his huge book, another letter arrived from Wallace. Thank goodness Alfred Russell Wallace was out in the Malay Archipelago, and that letters took a good six months to get to and from him. It had been sixteen years since Darwin started working on this theory: he was going to be lapped.ĭarwin started work on what would have become a three-volume monster of a book. Publish, they said, publish, for God's sake publish. Letters were exchanged with his confidantes Lyell and Hooker. A year later he sent him a letter, not preserved, outlining his new idea about how species change.ĭarwin was spooked. Wallace sent Darwin a duck, although we don't know if it arrived. Hardly an indication of Darwin's evolutionary work. To Wallace, Darwin was the author of the Beagle journal. Darwin had written to Wallace asking him to send a seven day-old wild duck, if possible, but that was about it. Darwin's friend Edward Blyth wrote asking him what he thought: 'nothing very new', said Darwin, 'it's all creation with him.' There had been a letter to Wallace, cautious and hedging.ĭarwin and Wallace had almost certainly not met. Wallace had published a paper about the generation of species. Darwin had almost no idea Wallace existed and certainly didn't give him any special reason to write to him. Nothing he could have known about Darwin would have let him know he was writing to his only competitor in the world. Wallace had no idea that Darwin was working on the same thing. Unlike Darwin, Wallace had not spent twenty years contemplating this breakthrough the insight came to him during a fever in the Malay Archipelago. He received a letter out of the blue from Alfred Russell Wallace asking for assistance telling people about a new idea Wallace had come up with. The central event of Charles Darwin's life was forced on him by the most incredible circumstances. ![]()
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