( Charles Darwin's book on the Origin of Species was not published until 11 years later, in 1859. In 1847, Wallace and his friend Henry Walter Bates, both in their early twenties, agreed that they would jointly make a collecting trip to the Amazon "towards solving the problem of origin of species". The book is much cited, and is Wallace's most successful, both commercially and as a piece of literature. Nearly all agreed that he had provided an interesting and comprehensive account of the geography, natural history, and peoples of the archipelago, which little was known about to readers at the time, in addition to the extensive breadth of specimens collected. Reviewers noted and sometimes disagreed with various aspects of his theories, especially the division of fauna and flora along what soon became known as the Wallace line, natural selection and uniformitarianism. The Malay Archipelago attracted many reviews, with interest from scientific, geographic, church and general periodicals. The work was illustrated with engravings, based on Wallace's observations and collection, by the leading illustrators Thomas Baines, Walter Hood Fitch, John Gerrard Keulemans, E. ![]() The preface notes that he travelled over 14,000 miles and collected 125,660 natural history specimens, mostly of insects though also thousands of molluscs, birds, mammals and reptiles. At the same time, he describes his experiences, the difficulties of travel, and the help he received from the different peoples that he met. The book describes each island that he visited in turn, giving a detailed account of its physical and human geography, its volcanoes, and the variety of animals and plants that he found and collected. ![]() ![]() The book went through ten editions in the nineteenth century it has been reprinted many times since, and has been translated into at least twelve languages. It was published in two volumes in 1869, delayed by Wallace's ill health and the work needed to describe the many specimens he brought home. The Malay Archipelago is a book by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace which chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight-year period 1854 to 1862, of the southern portion of the Malay Archipelago including Malaysia, Singapore, the islands of Indonesia, then known as the Dutch East Indies, and the island of New Guinea.
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