Charles Darwin had been mulling over his observations of and theories about natural selection for years, but what finally prompted him to write On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published November 24, 1859) was the arrival of a letter from fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 to 1913) on the very same subject. This fateful 1858 letter, Darwin noted in communication with geologist Charles Lyell, was a most "striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract."

To commemorate this meeting of the minds and the 150th anniversary of Darwin's seminal work, the American Museum of Natural History in New York launched the first public viewing of Wallace's most substantial remaining collections: a single cabinet packed full with 1,679 well-preserved natural specimens collected, pinned, labeled and arranged, experts believe, by Wallace's own hands. The cabinet belongs to Robert Heggestad, who spotted it in an antique store in 1979.  

Like Darwin, Wallace spent years in the field, traveling to far-off locales and studying the similarity and differences among species. Much of Wallace's formative fieldwork took place in the wilds of Brazil, where he worked from the 1850s to 1860s with entomologist Henry Walter Bates. Wallace's later travels to Indonesia further allowed him to carefully study animals directly and helped to solidify his theories about how species came to differentiate.

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