|
''The Malay Archipelago'' is a book by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace that 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. 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 book went through ten editions in the nineteenth century; it has been reprinted many times since, and has been translated into at least eight languages. The book described 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. 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 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. 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. W. Robinson, Joseph Wolf and T. W. Wood. ''The Malay Archipelago'' attracted many reviews, with interest from scientific, geographic, church and general periodicals. Reviewers noted and sometimes disagreed with various of his theories, especially the division of fauna and flora along what soon became known as the Wallace line, natural selection and uniformitarianism. Nearly all agreed that he had provided an interesting and comprehensive account of the geography, natural history, and peoples of the archipelago, which was little known to their readers at the time, and that he had collected an astonishing number of specimens. The book is much cited, and is Wallace's most successful, both commercially and as a piece of literature. == Context == 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". (Charles Darwin's book on the ''Origin of Species'' was not published until 11 years later, in 1859. It was based on Darwin's own long collecting trip on HMS Beagle, its publication precipitated by a famous letter from Wallace, sent during the period covered by ''The Malay Archipelago'' while he was staying in Ternate, which described the theory of evolution by natural selection in outline.) Wallace and Bates had been inspired by reading the American entomologist William Henry Edwards's pioneering 1847 book ''A Voyage Up the River Amazon, with a residency at Pará''.〔Edwards, 1847.〕 Bates stayed in the Amazons for 11 years, going on to write ''The Naturalist on the River Amazons'' (1863); however, Wallace, ill with fever, went home in 1852 with thousands of specimens, some for science and some for sale. The ship and his collection were destroyed by fire at sea near the Guianas. Rather than giving up, Wallace wrote about the Amazon in both prose and poetry, and then set sail again, this time for the Malay Archipelago.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Malay Archipelago」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|