that Alfred Russel
Wallace at twenty-one was very much such a man as his son, who did such
good work at the Roycroft with pick and shovel. Alfred was earnest,
intent, strong, and had a deal of quiet courage that he was as
unconscious of as he was of his digestion.

He taught school, and to interest his scholars he would take them on
botanical excursions. Then he himself grew interested, and began to
collect plants, bugs, beetles and birds on his own account.

By Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight, the confining walls of the school had
become intolerable to Wallace, and he started away on a wild-goose chase
to Brazil, with a chum by the name of Henry Walter Bates, an ardent
entomologist. Alfred had no money either, but Bates had influence, and
he cashed it in by arranging with the Curator of the British Museum,
that any natural-history specimens of value which they might gather and
send to him would be paid for. And so something like a hundred pounds
was collected from several scientific men, and handed over as advance
payment for the wonderful things that the young men were to send back.

They embarked on a sailing-vessel that was captained by a kind kinsman
of Bates, so the fare was nil, in consideration of services rendered
constructively.

Arriving in Brazil the young men began their collecting of specimens.
They got together a very creditable collection of birds' eggs and sent
them back by the captain of the ship they came out on, this as an
earnest of what was to come.

Bates and Wallace were together for a year. Bates insisted on remaining
near the white settlements; but Wallace wanted to go where white men had
never been. So alone he went into the forests, and for two years lived
with the natives and dared the dangers of jungle-fever, snakes,
crocodiles and savages. For a space of ten months he did not see a
single white person.

He collected nearly ten thousand specimens of birds, which he skinned
and carefully prepared so they could be mounted when he returned to
England; there was also a nearly complete Brazilian herbarium, and a
finer collection of birds' eggs than any museum of England could boast.

This collection represented over three years' continuous toil. All the
curious things were packed with great care and placed on board ship.

And so the young naturalist sailed away for England, proud and happy,
with his great collection of entomological, botanical and ornithological
specimens.

But on the wa