The Malay Archipelago: the land of the Orang-Utan, and the bird of paradise: a narrative of travel with studies of man and nature/ by Alfred Russel Wallace

Included fold-out pages.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"I slept very comfortably with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended over my head." (Alfred Russel). Wallace left to explore the islands of southeast Asia an obscure naturalist; he returned eight years later an acclaimed scientist and co-discoverer of the theory of evolution. This is his vivid, exhilarating and heroic account of his travels across the entire Malay world, from Singapore to the western edges of New Guinea. With exploratory zeal and lyrical brilliance, he describes battling through jungles, enduring seasickness and fever, meeting head hunters, marvelling at birds of paradise and collecting countless new species, as he made discoveries that changed our view of the world. This is a new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.