Alfred Russel Wallace's collecting journey in Dorey, New Guinea

Alfred Russel Wallace was an intensive collector of the natural world in the Malay Archipelago, whose contributions to the debate on evolution and natural selection in the late 1850s were of international importance. This paper considers the detail of his collecting experiences, and the personal journeys of physical and mental discovery involved, by focusing on his expedition to Dorey, New Guinea, in 1858. It maps the unique rhythm of a collecting journey that generated thousands of specimens for Western museums, with emphasis placed on sensory themes concerned with human encounter and wellbeing.