Wallace Letters Online (the electronic archive of Wallace's correspondence) has just received its first major update since its launch on 24 January this year. A total of 297 new transcripts, 320 letters (178 of them published versions) and 17 manuscript items have been added, including one of Wallace's notebooks (WCP5223), a scientifically important note about weevil (beetle) specimens he collected in the Malay Archipelago (WCP5114), and some 'newly discovered' pencil sketches that Wallace made in Brazil (WCP5099, WCP5100, WCP5101, WCP5102).
The latter are the most exciting additions since they are some of the few possessions which Wallace managed to rescue from the smoke-filled cabin of his ship, before it burned and sank in the mid-Atlantic on his way back to England in 1852. All of the other sketches that he managed to save, apart from his fish drawings, are owned by the Linnean Society, so it's great that the Museum now has a few of its own. They were loosely inserted into his personal first edition copy of his book Narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro and although I had noticed them there years ago, it was only recently that I realised that they were unknown to others, including the Museum's librarians!
One of them (WCP5102) was reproduced in his Amazon book as the illustration on plate 2 "Forms of Granite rocks". It is wonderful to be able to 'rediscover' treasures like these and make them available to Wallace scholars for the first time.
WCP5099. Front reads: "First rocky point, in Rio Tocantins 50 miles above Bãiao.Sept 10", back reads: "Sketch no. 4. First rocky point in the Tocantins [River]"
WCP5100. Back reads: "Sketch no. 5. Mr C's. Hous[e] in the Island of Mexicana"
WCP5101. Front reads: "Sugar and Rice Mill.", back reads: "Sketch no. 6. S. Jozé on the Capim River"
