“He [the naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth's history; and, as a few lost letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of the numerous forms of life which the progress of cultivation invariably entails will necessarily render obscure this invaluable record of the past.”

(1863) "On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago." The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 33:217-234.

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Alfred Russel Wallace 12
British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist an… 1823–1913

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