Biogeography and evolution

… out of at least three hundred and fifty land birds inhabiting Java and Borneo, not more than ten have passed eastward into Celebes. Yet the straits of Macassar are not nearly so wide as the Java sea, and at least a hundred species are common to Borneo and Java.
— Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), The Malay Archipelago (1869), 111.

The island of Timor … bears this relation to Australia; for while it contains several birds and insects of Australian forms, no Australian mammal or reptile is found in it, and a great number of the most abundant and characteristic forms of Australian birds and insects are entirely absent.
— Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), The Malay Archipelago (1869), 373.

If I were a Cassowary
On the plains of Timbuctoo,
I would eat a missionary
Coat and bands and Hymn-book too.
— attributed to Bishop ‘Soapy Sam’ Samuel Wilberforce

[It is worth noting here that “Soapy Sam” was the bishop who presumed to “debate” evolution with T. H. Huxley at the British Association in 1860 (see next entry). Given that he had no idea where cassowaries come from, we should not be surprised that he lost.]

So when I got up I spoke pretty much to the effect — that I had listened with great attention to the Lord Bishop’s speech but had been unable to discover either a new fact or a new argument in it — except, indeed, the question raised as to my personal predilections in the matter of ancestry — That it would not have occurred to me to bring forward such a topic as that for discussion myself, but that I was quite ready to meet the Right Revd. prelate even on that ground — If then, said I the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence & yet who employs those faculties & that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion — I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

Whereupon there was inextinguishable laughter among the people — and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention … I think Samuel will think twice before he tries a fall with men of science again …
— Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 – 1895), letter to Dr F. D. Dyster of Tenby, 1860, in Cyril Bibby (ed.) The Essence of T. H. Huxley, Macmillan, 1967, pp. 12-13.

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