Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 | Page 9

for several years. "Having no
friends of my own age," he wrote, "I occupied myself with various
pursuits in which I had begun to take an interest. Having learnt the use
of the sextant in surveying, and my brother having a book on Nautical
Astronomy, I practised a few of the simpler observations. Among these
were determining the meridian by equal altitudes of the sun, and also
by the pole-star at its upper or lower culmination; finding the latitude
by the meridian altitude of the sun, or of some of the principal stars;
and making a rude sundial by erecting a gnomon towards the pole. For
these simple calculations I had Hannay and Dietrichsen's Almanac, a

copious publication which gave all the important data in the Nautical
Almanac, besides much other interesting matter useful for the
astronomical amateur or the ordinary navigator. I also tried to make a
telescope by purchasing a lens of about 2 ft. focus at an optician's in
Swansea, fixing it in a paper tube and using the eye-piece of a small
opera-glass. With it I was able to observe the moon and Jupiter's
satellites, and some of the larger star-clusters; but, of course, very
imperfectly. Yet it served to increase my interest in astronomy, and to
induce me to study with some care the various methods of construction
of the more important astronomical instruments; and it also led me
throughout my life to be deeply interested in the grand onward march
of astronomical discovery."[2]
At the same time Wallace became attracted by, and interested in, the
flowers, shrubs and trees growing in that part of Bedfordshire, and he
acquired some elementary knowledge of zoology. "It was," he writes,
"while living at Barton that I obtained my first information that there
was such a science as geology.... My brother, like most land-surveyors,
was something of a geologist, and he showed me the fossil oysters of
the genus Gryphæa and the Belemnites ... and several other fossils
which were abundant in the chalk and gravel around Barton.... It was
here, too, that during my solitary rambles I first began to feel the
influence of nature and to wish to know more of the various flowers,
shrubs and trees I daily met with, but of which for the most part I did
not even know the English names. At that time I hardly realised that
there was such a science as systematic botany, that every flower and
every meanest and most insignificant weed had been accurately
described and classified, and that there was any kind of system or order
in the endless variety of plants and animals which I knew existed. This
wish to know the names of wild plants, to be able to speak ... about
them, had arisen from a chance remark I had overheard about a year
before. A lady ... whom we knew at Hertford, was talking to some
friends in the street when I and my father met them ... [and] I heard the
lady say, 'We found quite a rarity the other day--the Monotropa; it had
not been found here before.' This I pondered over, and wondered what
the Monotropa was. All my father could tell me was that it was a rare
plant; and I thought how nice it must be to know the names of rare

plants when you found them."[3]
One can picture the tall quiet boy going on these solitary rambles, his
eye becoming gradually quickened to perceive new forms in nature,
contrasting them one with another, and beginning to ponder over the
cause which led to the diverse formation and colouring of leaves
apparently of the same family.
It was in 1841, four years later, that he heard of, and at once procured, a
book published at a shilling by the S.P.C.K. (the title of which he could
not recall in after years), to which he owed his first scientific
glimmerings of the vast study of botany. The next step was to procure,
at much self-sacrifice, Lindley's "Elements of Botany," published at
half a guinea, which to his immense disappointment he found of very
little use, as it did not deal with British plants! His disappointment was
lessened, however, by the loan from a Mr. Hayward of London's
"Encyclopedia of Plants," and it was with the help of these two books
that he made his first classification of the specimens which he had
collected and carefully kept during the few preceding years.
"It must be remembered," he says in "My Life," "that my ignorance of
plants at this time was extreme. I knew the wild rose, bramble,
hawthorn, buttercup, poppy, daisy and foxglove, and a very few others
equally common.... I knew nothing whatever as to genera and species,
nor of the large number of distinct forms related to