Of the journals of
his voyagings, "The Malay Archipelago" will always be ranked among
the greatest narratives of travel. The fact that this volume has
gone through a dozen editions is witness to its extraordinary
popularity among intelligent minds, and hardly supports the belief
that his scientific work has been forgotten. Nor can this
popularity be a matter of much surprise, for few travellers have
possessed Wallace's powers of exposition, his lucidity and charm
of style. Professor Strasburger of Bonn has declared that through
"The Malay Archipelago" "a new world of scientific knowledge" was
unfolded before him. "I feel it ... my duty," he adds, "to
proclaim it with gratitude." Wallace's narrative has attracted
during the past half-century numerous naturalists to follow in his
tracks, many of whom have reaped rich aftermaths of his harvest;
but certain it is that no explorer in the same, if in any other,
region has approached his eminence, or attained the success he
achieved.
As a systematic zoologist, Wallace took no inconsiderable place;
his _metier_, however, was different. He described, nevertheless,
large sections of his Lepidoptera and of his birds, on which many
valuable papers are printed in the _Transactions_ of the learned
societies and in various scientific periodicals. Of the former,
special mention may be made of that on variation in the
"Papilionidae of the Malayan Region," of which Darwin has recorded:
"I have never in my life been more struck by any paper.
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