vels, supplemented the lack of interesting history lessons at school,
besides giving him an insight into many kinds of literature suited to
his varied tastes and temperament. In addition, however, to the hours
spent in reading, he and his brother John found endless delight in
turning the loft of an outhouse adjoining their yard into a sort of
mechanical factory. Here they contrived, by saving up all their pence
(the only pocket-money that came to them), to make crackers and other
simple fireworks, and to turn old keys into toy cannon, besides making a
large variety of articles for practical domestic purposes. Thus he
cultivated the gift of resourcefulness and self-reliance on which he had
so often to depend when far removed from all civilisation during his
travels on the Amazon and in the Malay Archipelago.

A somewhat amusing instance of this is found in a letter to his sister,
dated June 25th, 1855, at a time when he wanted a really capable man for
his companion, in place of the good-natured but incapable boy Charles,
whom he had brought with him from London to teach collecting. In reply
to some remarks by his sister about a young man who she thought would be
suitable, he wrote: "Do not tell me merely that he is 'a very nice young
man.' Of course he is.... I should like to know whether he can live on
rice and salt fish for a week on occasion.... Can he sleep on a
board?... Can he walk twenty miles a day? Whether he can work, for there
is sometimes as hard work in collecting as in anything. Can he saw a
piece of wood straight? Ask him to make you anything--a little card box,
a wooden peg or bottle-stopper, and see if he makes them neat and
square."

In another letter he describes the garden and live stock he had been
able to obtain where he was living; and in yet another he gives a long
list of his domestic woes and tribulations--which, however, were
overcome with the patience inculcated in early life by his hobbies, and
also by the fact that the family was always more or less in straitened
circumstances, so that the children were taught to make themselves
useful in various ways in order to assist their mother in the home.

As he grew from childhood into youth, Alfred Wallace's extreme
sensitiveness developed to an almost painful degree. He grew rapidly,
and his unusual height made him still more shy when forced to occupy any
prominent position amongst boys of his own age. During the latter part
of his time at Hertfo