In the light of future events it is not surprising that Huxley (many years later), in referring to this “powerful essay,” adds:  “On reading it afresh I have been astonished to recollect how small was the impression it made.”

As this earliest contribution by Wallace to the doctrine of Evolution[18] is of peculiar historical value, and has not been so fully recognised as it undoubtedly deserves, and is now almost inaccessible, it will be useful to indicate in his own words the clear line of argument put forth by him two years before his second essay with which many readers are more familiar.  He begins: 

Every naturalist who has directed his attention to the subject of the geographical distribution of animals and plants must have been interested in the singular facts which it presents.  Many of these facts are quite different from what would have been anticipated, and have hitherto been considered as highly curious but quite inexplicable.  None of the explanations attempted from the time of Linnaeus are now considered at all satisfactory; none of them have given a cause sufficient to account for the facts known at the time, or comprehensive enough to include all the new facts which have since been and are daily being added.  Of late years, however, a great light has been thrown upon the subject by geological investigations, which have shown that the present state of the earth, and the organisms now inhabiting it, are but the last stage of a long and uninterrupted series of changes which it has undergone, and consequently, that to endeavour to explain and account for its present condition without any reference to those changes (as has frequently been done) must lead to very imperfect and erroneous conclusions....  The following propositions in Organic Geography and Geology give the main facts on which the hypothesis [see p. 96] is founded.

    GEOGRAPHY

(1) Large groups, such as classes and orders, are generally spread over the whole earth, while smaller ones, such as families and genera, are frequently confined to one portion, often to a very limited district.

    (2) In widely distributed families the genera are often limited in
    range; in widely distributed genera, well-marked groups of species
    are peculiar to each geographical district.

(3) When a group is confined to one district and is rich in species, it is almost invariably the case that the most closely allied species are found in the same locality or in closely adjoining localities, and that therefore the natural sequence of the species by affinity is also geographical.

(4) In countries of a similar climate, but separated by a wide sea or lofty mountains, the families, genera and species of the one are often represented by closely allied families, genera and species peculiar to the other.

    GEOLOGY

    (5) The distribution of the organic world in time is very similar
    to its present distribution in space.