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20190910

An active volcano dominates the small Indonesian island of Ternate. (Photo by Stephen Grenville)

STEPHEN GRENVILLE

TERNATE, Indonesia -- Nearly 160 years ago, the naturalist and professional beetle-collector Alfred Russel Wallace dispatched a momentous letter from Ternate, then in the far-eastern reaches of the Dutch East Indies, now part of Indonesia. Its arrival three months later at Charles Darwin's residence in England was a bombshell for Darwin, who had been wrestling for decades with his theory of evolution.

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