A straightforward puzzle cache about an eminent scientist for whom Leicester was important.

**Moved on 30/11/14. See my note of that date. If you solved before then you need the new coords!**

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a great scientist. He independently discovered evolution by means of natural selection, the breakthrough normally ascribed to Darwin. Darwin had the idea first, but he had not published it and Wallace also conceived it without knowing anything of Darwin's work on it, though they had met and been in correspondence.

Famously, Wallace sent his essay setting out the theory to Darwin, who was well on the way to writing a whole book about the idea. Darwin was unsure about what to do, but he did not want to be thought to be taking credit for someone else’s work, and put the matter in the hands of two other eminent scientists; Lyell and Hooker. They decided to present Wallace's essay together with a paper of Darwin's to the Linnaean Society of London on x July 1858 so that they should both be credited with coming up with the idea. Darwin had been sitting on the idea for years, knowing that it would cause controversy. Wallace's intervention forced his hand and he published his magnum opus On the Origin of Species the following year.

Wallace’s connection with Leicester was much earlier, in 1843, when he was a teacher at the Collegiate School, which was at the nominal location of the cache, and the buildings of which can still be seen.

He was employed to ‘take the junior classes in English reading, writing, and arithmetic, teach a very few boys surveying, and beginners in drawing’.* By his own account he was really only qualified to teach surveying (in which he had trained), and was barely better at drawing than his young students. He tried to improve himself, and the head of the school, Rev A Hill, agreed to teach him more mathematics, but he had no real aptitude for it and though he made some progress he stuck at calculus. He then concentrated on other things, at which he turned out to be a genius.

At the time there was a very good public library in Leicester. [Does anyone know where it would have been in 1844?] Wallace made full use of it: ‘Among the works I read here, which influenced my future, were H’s Personal Narrative of Travels in South America ... [and] perhaps the most important book I read was M’s Principles of Population, which ... twenty years later gave me the long-sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of organic species.’

In Leicester Wallace was introduced to mesmerism, what we now call hypnotism, and with Mr Hill’s permission he experimented on the boys of the Collegiate school! (Doing them no harm.)

More significantly, while in Leicester, probably in the library, Wallace met another young man; Henry W Bates, the son of a Leicester hosiery manufacturer. This profoundly changed his life, as Bates introduced him to the study of beetles. ‘He asked me to see his collection, and I was amazed to find the great number and variety of beetles, their many strange forms and often beautiful markings or colouring, and was even more surprised when I found that almost all I saw had been collected around Leicester, and that there were still many more to be discovered. If I had been asked before how many different kinds of beetles were to be found in any small district near a town, I should probably have guessed fifty or at the outside a hundred, and thought that a very liberal allowance. But I now learnt that many hundreds could easily be collected, and that there were probably a thousand different kinds within ten miles of the town.’

This was a key moment in his life. He was already interested in the natural world, but it was his study of beetles that really led to his eminence as a scientist, and to his brilliant idea of 1858. He had to leave Leicester after little more than a year when his older brother died and he had to take over the family surveying business. But he had no doubt of the significance of his brief stay in Leicester in setting the course of his later career: ‘My year spent at Leicester must, therefore, be considered as perhaps the most important in my early life.’

When he left Leicester Wallace kept in touch with Bates, and a few years later they came up with a plan of visiting the Amazon to collect insects, paying their expenses by selling specimens on their return. Having passed on the family business to another brother, Wallace was able in 1848 to set off with Bates for Brazil. He again visited Leicester: ‘Mr. Bates' parents having kindly invited me to spend a week with them before we sailed, we left London early in April for Leicester, where I was very hospitably entertained, and had an opportunity of visiting some of my old friends. ... I spent some days in the wild district of Charnwood Forest, which I had often wished to visit.’

In Brazil Wallace spent some years exploring and charting the Rio N, as well as collecting specimens of insects and other animals. Bates stayed in Brazil when Wallace returned in 185y. Wallace was shipwrecked on the return journey, losing his specimens and lucky to survive when he and the crew were picked up after ten days in a leaky open boat in the Atlantic. Fortunately, and surprisingly, his agent had insured the specimens, albeit for less than they were worth. Despite the loss of his notes he wrote several papers and books in London during the next two years. He then set off to the tropics again, this time to the Malay Archipelago, which we now know as I. It was there that he had his insight into the transmutation of species by the mechanism of natural selection, which came to him during an attack of malaria. It was from there that he wrote to Darwin with the brilliant and fundamental idea that they had both had.

In 1862 Wallace returned to Britain, married and had children. He continued with his scientific work, and in 186z published his most celebrated book 'The Malay Archipelago'. He also became a noted social reformer, seeking to improve the lot of working people and supporting women’s suffrage. Combining his scientific knowledge with his social conscience he strongly opposed eugenics, a dangerous misreading of evolutionary theory then widely supported in Britain. His financial situation was not good until, after lobbying by Darwin, he was awarded a pension in reward for his scientific work and to enable him to continue it. He and Darwin remained good friends, and would often dine together when Darwin was in London.

Wallace became one of the most famous people of his era. He lived a long life, dying aged 90 on 7 November 1913. At his own request he was buried not in Westminster Abbey but in the village of B, in Dorset.

*All quotations from Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. This is recommended, it can be read online at

http://wallace-online.org/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=S729.1&viewtype=text

Wallace’s life in Leicester is at pp230-240 and his account of his discovery of natural selection at pp360-363.

The cache

You should have 10 smallish numbers (just count the letters in names); x, A, M, H, W, N, y, I, z, B.
As a check their total is in the title of a Beatles song.

The cache is at N52 3a.bcd W001 0e.fgh, where
a = W + y - x
b = N + I - W
c = x + B - H
d = M + N - A
e = x + H - y
f = y + z - I
g = W + z - M
h = A + B – I

You can check your answer, and there is a little more information, at: