He outlined the theory rapidly in a paper, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type," and sent it to Darwin, who saw that Wallace had hit upon exactly the theory that he himself had formed and privately written down in 1842. The occasion gave him time to reflect on the mechanism by which species might be altered. Wallace first thought of the theory of natural selection in February 1858, when he was ill with a fever at Ternate in the Moluccas. He wrote extensively on a wide variety of subjects, but biological interests remained central to his outlook and are reflected in such books as The Geographical Distribution of Animals (London and New York, 1876), Darwinism (London and New York, 1889), Man's Place in the Universe (London and New York, 1903), and The World of Life (London and New York, 1910). Darwin, Lyell, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, and Herbert Spencer were among his most intimate friends. The rest of Wallace's long life was spent in England, except for a lecture tour of the United States in 1887 and short visits to the Continent. Another of his scientific contributions was "Wallace's line," a zoogeographical boundary he drew in 1863 to separate Indian and Australian faunal regions, and which was assumed to pass through the middle of the archipelago. When he returned in 1862, he had become a convinced evolutionist and was known in scientific circles for his formulation of the theory of natural selection. He subsequently wrote an account of this trip, The Malay Archipelago (London, 1869), which is a fascinating narrative. In 1854, after a brief visit to England, Wallace set out by himself for the Malay Archipelago. The two men later embarked on a collecting trip to the Amazon, where Wallace remained for four years examining the tropical flora and fauna. Bates (1825 –1892), who introduced him to scientific entomology. In 1844, while teaching school at Leicester, he met the naturalist H. But he also read widely and was influenced by the works of Alexander von Humboldt, Thomas Malthus, and Charles Lyell, as Darwin was. Like many of his contemporaries he acquired an early taste for the study of nature. He was largely self-educated, having left school at fourteen to serve as a surveyor's assistant with his brother. Alfred Russel Wallace, the English naturalist and coformulator with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection, was born at Usk, Monmouthshire.
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