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  • Author or Editor: Gwil Evans x
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Abstract

On 9 Mar. 1859, Alfred Russel Wallace dispatched a manuscript to Charles Darwin from the remote island of Ternate in the Moluccas. With his paper on species divergence, the young naturalist sent a request that, if the paper were judged to have merit, it should be passed on to Sir Charles Lyell, a leader in the English scientific establishment. When the paper arrived on 18 June, Darwin read it with dismay and distress (he had been preempted), but sent it the same day to Lyell, who also showed it to botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. The paper was read at the meeting of the Linnean Society of 1 July (along with some material of Darwin's) and appeared in print in the Journal of the Linnean Society the following month. Thus, 128 years ago, in the days of sailing ships and handset type, a manuscript sent from an obscure corner of the world took less than 6 months from manuscript to print and less than 3 months after arrival in England.

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