In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace ...

The Mystery of Mysteries Solved / 125
having once seized my whiskers & beard I could not get it off for some time,
as it doubtless felt quite at home being accustomed to cling almost from birth
to the long hair of its mother.” 39
Finally, the following unemotional rendering of a sanctioned murder reveals
a culture that must have been as curious to the English naturalist as the
diversity of nature itself:
Some years ago one of the English residents here had one of the native Balinese
women for his temporary wife. The girl however offended against the law
by receiving a flower or a sirih leaf or some such trifle from another man. This
was reported to the Rajah, (to some of whose wives the girl was related) & he
instantly sent to the Englishman’s house ordering him to give the woman up as
she must be krissed. In vain he begged & prayed, & offered to pay any fine the
Rajah might impose, & refused to give her up without he was compelled by
force. This the Rajah did not wish to resort to so he let the matter drop, and a
short time after sent one of his followers to the house, who beckoned the girl
to the door, & then saying “the Rajah sends you this” stabbed her to the
heart. 40
As often as not observations such as these were used by Wallace to support
some scientific hypothesis or bolster an argument. Such is the case with his
Figure 4-5 The python incident. In The Malay Archipelago, Wallace recounts
yet another adventure in the tropics when he recalled awakening one morning
to discover a giant python curled up three feet from his head that had kept
him up much of the night with a rustling noise. The account was illustrated
with this engraving of his Malaysian assistants trying to remove the intruder
from his hut. (From The Malay Archipelago, 1869)