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Wallace began his eight year journey in 1854 visiting each of the islands in the archipelago, some more than once. Perhaps his most important discovery being that the archipelago is zoologically divided into two by the deep water straight (Wallace’s Line) between Bali and Lombok. As his journey progressed so Wallace become a confirmed evolutionist, however it was not until he was suffering from a fever in the Moluccas that he came up with the theory of natural selection as the method of evolution. Putting his ideas down on paper over the following two days Wallace sent them off to Charles Darwin, the result being their joint paper which was given to the Linnean Society on 1st July, 1858.

Returning to London in 1862, Wallace sold sufficient of his collections to obtain income of some £300 per year from the capital raised and began work on The Malay Archipelago, which was published in 1869 (DNB).