may come will ask.

As to his descent, his upbringing, his education and his estimate of his
own character and work, we can, with rare good fortune, refer them to
his autobiography, in which he tells his own story and relates the
circumstances which, combined with his natural disposition, led him to
be a great naturalist and a courageous social reformer; nay more, his
autobiography is also in part a peculiar revelation of the inner man
such as no biography could approach. We are also able to send inquirers
to the biographies and works of his contemporaries--Darwin, Hooker,
Lyell, Huxley and many others. All this material is already available to
the diligent reader. But there are other sources of information which
the present book discloses--Wallace's home life, the large collection of
his own letters, the reminiscences of friends, communications which he
received from many co-workers and correspondents which, besides being of
interest in themselves, often cast a sidelight upon his own mind and
work. All these are of peculiar and intimate value to those who desire
to form a complete estimate of Wallace. And it is to help the reader to
achieve this desirable result that the present work is published.

It may be stated here that Wallace had suggested to the present writer
that he should undertake a new work, to be called "Darwin and Wallace,"
which was to have been a comparative study of their literary and
scientific writings, with an estimate of the present position of the
theory of Natural Selection as an adequate explanation of the process of
organic evolution. Wallace had promised to give as much assistance as
possible in selecting the material without which the task on such a
scale would obviously have been impossible. Alas! soon after the
agreement with the publishers was signed and in the very month that the
plan of the work was to have been shown to Wallace, his hand was