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Collecting
- Butterfly specimens showing Batesian mimicry
- Butterfly specimens showing sexual dimorphism
- Specimens of birdwing butterflies (Papilionidae)
- Specimens of Asian beetles
- Specimens of bugs, crickets and other insects
- Specimens of stick and leaf insects, and a stag-horned deer-fly and other insects
- Specimen pieces of bird and marsupial skin
- Specimens of dead leaf butterflies and Trogonoptera brookiana
- Collecting and sending insects to Bates
- Collecting insects in Wales
- Designing an insect cabinet
- Exchanging insect lists with Bates and keeping a journal
- Herbert Wallace collecting in Brazil
- Fish drawing from the Rio Negro - Curimata species
- Descriptions of fishes from the Upper Rio Negro - Curimata species
- Fish drawing from the Upper Rio Negro - Ageneiosus species
- Descriptions of fishes from the Rio Negro - Ageneiosus species
- Wallace is shipwrecked and loses his collections
- The start of Wallace's Malay Archipelago expedition
- Collecting insects in Singapore
- Collecting insects in Malacca and Mount Ophir
- Qualities of a good field assistant and hand-rearing an orang-utan
- Collecting in Borneo and the departure of his assistant
- The insect life of the Malay Archipelago
- Notes on birds in Macassar
- List of expedition food supplies
- Insects and their colouring
- Wallace on biogeography
- Payment to Wallace by the British Museum
- Problems with the British Museum paying Wallace
- Insect list from the Malay Archipelago
- The Malay Archipelago book - map and dedication
- Photograph of Fred Birch
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Specimens of Asian beetles
Catalogue number: Drawer 25
Wallace's specimens of stag beetles, weevils and chafers, some of which are illustrated in his book The Malay Archipelago.
This drawer contains 80 south-east Asian beetles. There are stag
beetles (Lucanidae), weevils (Curculionoidea), chafers
(Cetoniinae), jewel beetles (Buprestidae) and others. The specimens
in this drawer were badly damaged by pests when the Museum received
them. They were painstakingly restored by the curator responsible
for the collection.
Wallace collected thousands of insects during his expedition around the Malay Archipelago (1854-1862). On his return Wallace wrote a book that detailed his journey and the natural history of the area. The small male stag beetle Cyclommatus tarandus from Borneo, seen at the top-middle of the drawer, is probably the actual specimen illustrated in figure 4 of The Malay Archipelago. In addition, the enormous male long-armed chafer (Euchirus longimanus) in the centre of this drawer is the specimen illustrated in The Malay Archipelago (Fig. 33, with the caption 'Moluccan Beetles', page 401). Wallace also recounts his observations of this species in Amboyna (Ambon): '...this extraordinary insect is rarely or never captured except when it comes to drink the sap of the sugar palms, where it is found by the natives when they go early in the morning to take away the bamboos which have been filled during the night...they are sluggish insects, and pull themselves lazily along by means of their immense forelegs'.
Another noteworthy specimen collected by Wallace is the Bornean stag beetle Odontolabis brookeana located to the right of Cyclommatus tarandus. It was named after Wallace's friend Sir James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak, with whom he stayed while visiting Borneo.
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Wallace Letters Online
View high resolution scans and transcripts of Alfred Russel Wallace's correspondence, including all surviving letters between him and Charles Darwin.