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Naturalist
- Exchanging insect lists with Bates and keeping a journal
- Wallace's advice to Bates on writing a book
- Wallace on animal distribution and admiration of Darwin
- Wallace on wild flowers in Java and England
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- Portrait of Wallace
- Comments on the distribution of birds in Celebes
- Flowers at The Dell
- Proof illustration of the animals of New Guinea
- Proof illustration of the birds of the Malay forest
- Proof illustration of the animals of Borneo
- Proof illustration of the birds of the Upper Amazon
- Proof illustration of the animals of a Canadian forest
- Proof illustration of the animals of Madagascar
- Darwin's notes on Wallace's Island Life book
- Wallace explains flower anatomy
- Wallace's Lowell Institute lecture on continental islands
- Report on Darwinism lectures
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- Attending the Cambridge University Natural Science Club
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- Annotated proof print of an orang-utan
- Annotated proof print of a gibbon
- Annotated proof print of a lemur
- Wallace donates his Amazonian fish drawings to the British Museum
- Science in 1907 manuscript
- Science in 1907 newspaper article
- Reply from Tring Zoological Museum about bird species
- Wallace and the Croydon Natural History Society
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Comments on the distribution of birds in Celebes
Full transcription
The
Dell, Grays, Essex.
Aug. 10th. 1872
Dear Lord Walden
Many thanks for the copy of your admirable catalogue of Celebes birds just received. Your excellent tables of distribution of genera show clearly most of the peculiarities of the island, - but they leave it almost doubtful to any ordinary reader whether the affinity is more with the Indian or the Australian Region. I believe your own notion is that the former has the preponderance, or at all events, that it is a very doubtful point. Allow me therefore to point out one mode of comparison you have not given, but which I think proves the Australian to be the Region to which Celebes belongs.
You very properly reject from Table .V all Indian genera which are non-Malayan, and you will find that almost every one of the genera given inhabit Borneo and Java, the two islands nearest to Celebes. But, in Table VI you do not reject a number of purely Papuan genera, which are wholly absent from the Moluccas and Tima, & cannot therefore be expected to occur in Celebes. If you reject all but Moluccan & Timarese genera you will have a very much smaller number not occurring in Celebes, & thus proportionately increase its Moluccan (Australian Region) affinities. I think a fair test would be to state the proportion between them thus:
Total Moluccan Genera
Moluccan Genera in Celebes
and
Total Borneo & Java Genera
Borneo & Java Genera in Celebes.
Also
Total Moluccan genera
Moluccan Genera absent from Celebes
and
Total Borneo & Java Genera
Borneo & Java genera absent from Celebes
The two sets compared would I think show a decided preponderance of affinity with the Australian Region.
I wish also to explain a slight misprint or oversight in my List of Sula Birds. You say I give the locality of Sula to Grancalus temminckii on Müllers authority. But I intended the (Müller) to apply only to the Celebes habitat - I having a [female] specimen of the bird from Sula. The list is a list of a collection made on Sula by my Assistant, and I was not and am not aware of any birds from Sula having been previously described.
Believe me
Yours very faithfully
[signed] Alfred Russel Wallace
[to] The Viscount Walden
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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.