Project Gutenberg's The Malay Archipelago, by Alfred Russell Wallace

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Title: The Malay Archipelago
Volume I. (of II.)

Author: Alfred Russell Wallace

Posting Date: December 1, 2008 [EBook #2530]
Release Date: February, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO ***

Produced by Martin Adamson

THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO, VOLUME I. (of II.)

By Alfred Russel Wallace

The land of the orang-utan, and the bird or paradise.

A narrative of travel, with sketches of man and nature.

To CHARLES DARWIN,

AUTHOR OF "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES,"

I dedicate this book,
Not only as a token of personal esteem and friendship
But also
To express my deep admiration
For
His genius and his works.

Project Gutenberg Editor's Note:

In this November 2008 update, many hundreds of errors
have been corrected; I am sure hundreds remain. These
volumes have not been proofread word by word. Readers
are encouaged to forward additional corrections to
PGLAF ERRATA.

--DW

PREFACE.

My readers will naturally ask why I have delayed writing this book
for six years after my return; and I feel bound to give them full
satisfaction on this point.

When I reached England in the spring of 1862, I found myself surrounded
by a room full of packing cases containing the collections that I had,
from time to time, sent home for my private use. These comprised nearly
three thousand birdskins of about one thousand species, at least twenty
thousand beetles and butterflies of about seven thousand species, and
some quadrupeds and land shells besides. A large proportion of these
I had not seen for years, and in my then weakened state of health, the
unpacking, sorting, and arranging of such a mass of specimens occupied a
long time.

I very soon decided that until I had done something towards naming and
describing the most important groups in my collection, and had worked
out some of the more interesting problems of variation and geographical
distribution (of which I had had glimpses while collecting them), I
would not attempt to publish my tr