Yet less than two months later that
solution flashed upon me, and to a large extent marked out a different
line of work from that which I had up to this time anticipated.... In
other parts of this letter I refer to the work I hoped to do myself in
describing, cataloguing, and working out the distribution of my insects.
I had in fact been bitten by the passion for species and their
description, and if neither Darwin nor myself had hit upon 'Natural
Selection,' I might have spent the best years of my life in this
comparatively profitless work. But the new ideas swept all this away."
This letter was finished after his arrival at Ternate, and a few weeks
later he was prostrated by a sharp attack of intermittent fever which
obliged him to take a prolonged rest each day, owing to the exhausting
hot and cold fits which rapidly succeeded one another.
The little bungalow at Ternate had now come to be regarded as "home" for
it was here that he stored all his treasured collections, besides making
it the goal of all his wanderings in the Archipelago. One can
understand, therefore, that, in spite of the fever, there was a sense of
satisfaction in the feeling that he was surrounded with the trophies of
his arduous labours as a naturalist, and this passion for species and
their descriptions being an ever-present speculation in his mind, his
very surroundings would unconsciously conduce towards the line of
thought which brought to memory the argument of "positive checks" set
forth by Malthus in his "Principles of Population" (read twelve years
earlier) as applied to savage and civilised races.
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