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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 bugs, crickets and other insects
Catalogue number: Drawer 27
Wallace's specimens of Asian bugs, wasps, bees, earwigs, bush-crickets and other insects.
This drawer of Wallace's insect specimens is one that was restored from a jigsaw of broken limbs and bodies. The result is a magnificent display of 51 individuals covering a wide variety of insect groups. Among them are bugs (Hemiptera), wasps and bees (Hymenoptera), earwigs (Dermaptera) and bush-crickets (Tettigoniidae).
Most prominent is the female giant shield-back bush-cricket (Siliquofera grandis) from New Guinea (the largest specimen seen top-middle). It is almost certainly the one illustrated by a woodcut in Wallace's book The Malay Archipelago (1869, vol. 2, page 434), where Wallace gives a description of its appearance and habits. He ends explaining 'these insects are sluggish in their motion, depending for safety on their resemblance to foliage, their horny shield and wing-covers, and their spiny legs'. This species is fairly common in New Guinea and it has one of the greatest wingspans of any bush-cricket (wingspans of over 27cm have been recorded).
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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.