Salvatore John Manna

Glorious Trees Salvatore John Manna

In 1887, one of the most famous men of science in the world visited California. Englishman Alfred Russel Wallace had conceptualized around the same time as Darwin the "survival of the fittest" cornerstone of natural selection, the lynchpin for the theory of evolution. "Glorious Trees: Alfred Russel Wallace in California" chronicles for the first time his nearly two-month sojourn, from his visits to the natural wonders of Yosemite and the Calaveras Big Trees to his meetings with the state's most eminent scientists and pivotal figures such as conservationist John Muir and politician and businessman Leland Stanford; from a highly publicized séance and his determined support of Spiritualism to his lectures on Darwinism. What Wallace did and said in California, where he was and who he met, connected him to a bewildering and sometimes bemusing range of people and subjects, from environmentalism to the beginnings of Stanford University; from the Calaveras Skull and one of the greatest hoaxes in natural history to Spiritualism and its colorful frauds; from the mechanized revolution in agriculture to, unbeknownst to him, perhaps the most famous poem in American history, "Casey at the Bat." Significantly, his 1886-1887 American journey was the first and only speaking tour of his lifetime and his lecture on Spiritualism in San Francisco his first public speech anywhere on that subject. Nowhere in America did Wallace immerse himself in nature as completely and nowhere were there cathedrals of nature he wanted most to worship at than those in California. Nowhere in America was his personal connection stronger than in California as well and the story of his '49er brother John is integral to understanding Wallace's time in California. As attested by the journal he kept along the way and the letters he wrote during his travels, which form the basis of "Glorious Trees," nowhere in America was Wallace more himself than when he was in California. The branches of "Glorious Trees: Alfred Russel Wallace in California" extend as far and as wide as those of the Sequoias Wallace so admired. "Glorious Trees" contributes an until-now unexamined portion of his life to the biography of one of the most fascinating men in the history of science.