caa a22 4500 386397902 CHVBK 20180307112145.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198912 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0007087400026352 doi S0007087400026352 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0007087400026352 Hughes R. Elwyn School of Pure and Applied Biology, University of Wales College of Cardiff, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, Wales CF1 3XF, U.K. Alfred Russel Wallace; some notes on the Welsh connection [Elektronische Daten] [R. Elwyn Hughes] Wallace became a full-time naturalist in 1848, the year when he and Bates set out on their journey to South America. Wallace was twenty-five at the time and over half of his life had been spent in various parts of Wales, the land of his birth. Commentators have tended to gloss over or ignore any formative influences from this early period of his life or even to dismiss them as non-existent. This is surprising as it was during the eight or so years in Wales leading up to 1848 that Wallace's interest in natural history emerged. ‘The importance of this early period in Wallace's life can scarcely be over-emphasized' wrote Durant in his account of the development of the Wallace personality, but he omitted any specific reference to the significance of the early period in Wales. Those seeking a simple unitary cause for Wallace's conversion to natural history usually locate this in his visit to Leicester in 1844 and his meeting there with H. W. Bates. ‘The odyssey began ... in 1844, in Leicester' wrote Brooks, adding that ‘the more remote parts of ... southern Wales had offered little reading material ' This, and similar claims, are presumably founded primarily on Wallace's belief—expressed sixty years later—that it was at Leicester that he first familiarized himself with Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Population and Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels in South America. There is, however, evidence that Wallace was probably familiar with at least one of these books some time before his visit to Leicester and that it was during his period in southern Wales that his interest in natural history emerged and developed. Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1989 The British Journal for the History of Science Cambridge University Press 22/4(1989-12), 401-418 0007-0874 22:4<401 1989 22 BJH https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400026352 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400026352 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Hughes R. Elwyn School of Pure and Applied Biology, University of Wales College of Cardiff, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff, Wales CF1 3XF, U.K NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The British Journal for the History of Science Cambridge University Press 22/4(1989-12), 401-418 0007-0874 22:4<401 1989 22 BJH CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge