Wallace, 'On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type': natural selection found independently

February 1858 Life and health theory

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A paper in which natural selection was derived independently of Darwin: since offspring are born many times more numerous than those that survive, the survivors are on average the better fitted, and a variety that gains an advantage displaces the parent form and does not revert to it.

The paper's author is the Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace. Lying in a malarial fever in the Moluccas, he recalled Malthus's argument about the 'positive checks' on population and carried it over to animals. He wrote his conclusion down in three evenings and sent it to Darwin, asking that it be shown to Lyell. Darwin saw in it 'his' theory, and Lyell and Hooker arranged a joint reading at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858, putting Darwin's extracts first and without consulting Wallace.

The paper was an independent discovery of natural selection, but its difference from Darwin's version matters: Wallace denied that domestic breeds tell anything about nature, whereas Darwin built his main argument on them.

Why this date

The paper is dated by its author 'Ternate, February, 1858'; according to the Darwin Correspondence Project it was written in February 1858. It was posted to Darwin from Ternate in March or April 1858 (the mailing date is disputed, see Smith 2014) and received at Down, by Darwin's letter to Lyell, on 18 June. It was read together with extracts from Darwin's manuscripts at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858 and printed on 20 August 1858: Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 3, 45-62 (Wallace's paper on pp. 53-62). The manuscript has not survived; the only text is the printed one. The axis takes the year of writing and printing, which coincide.

What it grew from

• 'An Essay on the Principle of Population': population outruns subsistence

  influenced · Confidence: high

  By Wallace's own account, the idea of the survival of the fittest came to him in a fever in the Moluccas when he recalled Malthus's 'positive checks' on population and realised that the same causes act still more strongly on animals; historians accept the account, and Malthus is among the books that 'profoundly influenced' Wallace as early as the 1840s.

  Dispute: The only evidence for Malthus's part in the insight of 1858 is Wallace's own accounts, the fullest of them written in 1905, 47 years later; the manuscript and covering letter are lost. Smith (2014) warns that Wallace in his recollections tends to compress separate events into a single sentence, and that van Wyhe questions the accuracy of his memory on this ground, though Smith himself puts it down to writing style rather than faulty memory. The origin of the idea itself is also argued: Costa (2013) holds that the Ternate paper was written as a response to Lyell's anti-evolutionary chapters rather than derived from Malthus; the paper does not name Malthus, although its reasoning about geometrical increase and that 'twice that number must perish annually' is plainly Malthusian.

  Link sources

  • A. R. Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, London: Chapman & Hall, vol. 1, pp. 361-363 (1905) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    One day something brought to my recollection Malthus's "Principles of Population," which I had read about twelve years before. I thought of his clear exposition of "the positive checks to increase"-disease, accidents, war, and famine-which keep down the population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of civilized peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually breed much more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each species

  • A. R. Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, London: Chapman & Hall, vol. 1, pp. 361-363 (1905) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarilyimprove the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.

  • Alfred Russel Wallace's essay on varieties, Darwin Correspondence Project (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Wallace's essay was written in February 1858. He recollected the events surrounding its composition in his autobiography (Wallace 1905, 1: 361-3)

  • H. Lewis McKinney, Wallace, Alfred Russel, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1976) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    indeed, during the period from 1842 to 1846, he consumed various works by Alexander von Humboldt, T. R. Malthus, Charles Darwin, Robert Chambers, Charles Lyell, and William Swainson. These books profoundly influenced his subsequent intellectual development

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

• 'Principles of Geology': the Earth's past explained by causes now in operation and by vast time

  influenced · Confidence: high

  Wallace read Lyell in the 1840s, and Costa shows that the papers of 1855 and 1858 were written as a reply to the anti-transmutation chapters of the Principles of Geology: Lyell was for Wallace both a source and an opponent, and Darwin was cast as the intermediary through whom the paper was to reach Lyell.

  Dispute: Costa's thesis of Lyell as the 'chief addressee' of the Ternate paper is recent (2013) and not generally accepted: the usual account (Britannica, the Darwin Correspondence Project) sees Lyell and Hooker only as the organisers of the 1858 reading. Smith (2014) accepts Costa's point that Wallace had his own reason to seek a conversation with Lyell (the dispute over the biogeography of Aru) but disputes that the sentence about Lyell in 'My Life' proves the letter to Darwin was a reply to news of Lyell's approval. Lyell's influence on Wallace's reading of the 1840s (McKinney) is itself not contested.

  Link sources

  • James T. Costa, Engaging with Lyell: Alfred Russel Wallace's Sarawak Law and Ternate papers as reactions to Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, Theory in Biosciences 132 (4), 225-237 (2013) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    This narrative has resulted in an under-appreciation of a more central role for Charles Lyell as both Wallace's inspiration and foil. The extensive anti-transmutation arguments in Lyell's landmark Principles of Geology were taken as the definitive statement on the subject. Wallace, in his quest to solve the mystery of species origins, engaged with Lyell's arguments in his private field notebooks in a way that is concordant with his engagement with Lyell in the 1855 and 1858 papers.

  • James T. Costa, Engaging with Lyell: Alfred Russel Wallace's Sarawak Law and Ternate papers as reactions to Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, Theory in Biosciences 132 (4), 225-237 (2013) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    I show that Lyell was the object of Wallace's Sarawak Law and Ternate papers through a consideration of the circumstances that led Wallace to send his Ternate paper to Darwin, together with an analysis of the material that Wallace drew upon from the Principles. In this view Darwin was, ironically, intended for a supporting role in mediating Wallace's attempted dialog with Lyell.

  • H. Lewis McKinney, Wallace, Alfred Russel, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1976) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    indeed, during the period from 1842 to 1846, he consumed various works by Alexander von Humboldt, T. R. Malthus, Charles Darwin, Robert Chambers, Charles Lyell, and William Swainson. These books profoundly influenced his subsequent intellectual development

  • A. R. Wallace, My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, London: Chapman & Hall, vol. 1, pp. 361-363 (1905) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    I asked him if he thought it sufficiently important to show it to Sir Charles Lyell, who had thought so highly of my former paper.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

Other links

• 'On the Origin of Species': natural selection as the mechanism of species formation

  parallel to · Confidence: high

  Wallace arrived at natural selection independently of Darwin, who had been working on the same idea since 1838; the receipt of the Ternate paper on 18 June 1858 made Darwin abandon his large work and write the Origin of Species in a year and a half, and the joint reading at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858 secured priority for both.

  Dispute: Nobody contests the independence of Wallace's discovery; the argument is about Darwin's conduct in June 1858. Brackman ('A Delicate Arrangement', 1980), Brooks (1984) and Davies ('The Darwin Conspiracy', 2008; Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 105, 2012 and 109, 2013) claim that Darwin received the paper two weeks before he told Lyell and had time to borrow the principle of divergence from it; Smith summarises their position as 'Darwin was up to no good in the weeks that followed'. Van Wyhe and Rookmaaker (Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 105, 2012) reconstructed the mail routes and date the receipt to 17-18 June, removing the charge; the Darwin Correspondence Project states plainly 'Darwin didn't steal it'. Smith (2014) takes a middle position: he finds theft 'improbable' but admits the question is not fully closed. The 'delicate arrangement' itself is discussed separately: the reading was arranged without Wallace's knowledge and Darwin's extracts were placed first (McKinney, Britannica); Wallace himself, in a letter to Hooker in October 1858, approved the decision.

  Link sources

  • Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin Correspondence Project (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Independently formulated a theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858.

  • James T. Costa, Engaging with Lyell: Alfred Russel Wallace's Sarawak Law and Ternate papers as reactions to Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, Theory in Biosciences 132 (4), 225-237 (2013) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Accordingly, much attention has focused on their relationship, from their independent development of the principle of natural selection to the receipt by Darwin of Wallace's essay from Ternate in the spring of 1858, and the subsequent reading of the Wallace and Darwin papers at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858.

  • Fake Darwin: myths and misconceptions, Darwin Correspondence Project (2024) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Wallace came to similar conclusions about the mechanism for evolution (which Darwin termed 'natural selection'). The surviving historical evidence makes it clear, however, that Darwin had spent years developing the theory, amassing the evidence, and had written it out in draft form years earlier in 1842. Darwin didn't steal it.

  • Alfred Russel Wallace, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2024) Verified 24 Sep 2026

    In early 1858 he sent a paper outlining these ideas to Darwin, who saw such a striking coincidence to his own theory that he consulted his closest colleagues, the geologist Charles Lyell and the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker.

  • Phillip Sloan, Darwin: From the Origin of Species to the Descent of Man, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    The hurried preparation and publication of the Origin between the summer of 1858 and November of 1859 was prompted by the receipt on June 18 of 1858 of a letter and manuscript from Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) that outlined his remarkably similar views on the possibility of continuous species change under the action of a selection upon natural variation

  • Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, 18 [June 1858], Darwin Correspondence Project, Fake Darwin (1858) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    I never saw a more striking coincidence. if Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.

  • Nora Barlow (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, London: Collins, p. 121 (Darwin Online, F1497) (1958) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    early in the summer of 1858 Mr Wallace, who was then in the Malay archipelago, sent me an essay On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type; and this essay contained exactly the same theory as mine.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

Node sources

• Alfred Russel Wallace's essay on varieties, Darwin Correspondence Project (2024) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  The only known version of the text is the one published in Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology) 3 (1859): 45-62, and this text is reprinted below. Wallace's essay was written in February 1858.

• A. R. Wallace, On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type, Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 3, 53-62 (1858) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  The life of wild animals is a struggle for existence. The full exertion of all their faculties and all their energies is required to preserve their own existence and provide for that of their infant offspring.

• A. R. Wallace, On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type, Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Zoology 3, 53-62 (1858) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals.

• H. Lewis McKinney, Wallace, Alfred Russel, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1976) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  Determined that their friend Darwin should receive recognition of priority, Lyell and Hooker decided that Wallace's paper should be presented before the Linnean Society of London along with an excerpt from an essay by Darwin on natural selection and a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray discussing divergence (1 July 1858). Prefatory remarks by Hooker and Lyell emphasized Drawin's priority of discovery, and Wallace's paper was presented last. Wallace was never consulted on these matters and did not learn about the presentation until after the papers were published (20 August 1858).

• Darwin, C. R. and A. R. Wallace. 1858. On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3 (20 August): 45-62 (1858)

  On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. [Read 1 July] Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3 (20 August)

• Charles H. Smith, Wallace, Darwin and Ternate 1858, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 68 (2), 165-170 (2014) Verified 5 Oct 2026

  As the original documents have been lost, only two concrete pieces of evidence remain: (i) a letter dated 2 March 1858 that Wallace sent to the brother of his friend Henry Walter Bates, Frederick, that Frederick received in England on 2 June, and (ii) a letter dated '18' (ostensibly June) that Darwin sent to Sir Charles Lyell lamenting the reception 'to day' of Wallace's essay and note.

"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

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