Hugo didn't know much about Downing's financial situation, thinking that his defeat might affect his support for La Repubblica, so he brought his friend Alexandre Dumas to comfort the local tycoon's wounded heart.

In order to show his pride in front of the two writers, he also recited in French a poem by the English Lakeside poet Wordsworth:

Get up, get up, friend, and put your books behind or you'll be hunchbacked!

Rise, arise, friend, stretch your brow,

Why be burdened? -

The sun on the mountain,

Soft and fresh,

In the long green fields, sprinkled with the sweet light of dusk-

Book! Brings only dullness and endless annoyance,

Why don't you listen to the cardinals in the woods,

How sweet it sings! I can assure you,

There are more talents in the singing.

……

Yo ho, Shibei three days, when you look at each other, look at our big tyrants, can actually read poetry in French, not bad. Seeing Downing in such a state, Hugo and Dumas's mood suddenly brightened, and they muttered a long list of French, Downing basically didn't understand, and called for a translator in embarrassment, it turned out that Dumas went to the Lake District of North England, the hometown of Wordsworth, the author of the poem Downing read, to go on a hike.

The old nest of the lakeside poets has been famous for a long time, and this is a good idea.

Although they decided on their destination, they didn't make the trip right away, and Downing still had time to meet with a botanist who had come to apply for the job.

Downing had now restructured the South Sea Company into a trading company that he owned and owned, following its original name, paying off all government debts ahead of schedule, and smuggling back 80,000 rubber tree seeds from Brazil at a cost him £800. The next step was to find a man familiar with the properties of plants and lead a group of workers and farmers willing to go to the Straits Settlements to open up rubber plantations.

Have an interesting candidate named Alfred? Russell? Wallace. Strictly speaking, Wallace was not really a botanist, he was a surveyor by training. Long-term field surveying has made Wallace more interested in animals, insects and plants in the wild. With the accumulation of work experience, Wallace's talent gradually appeared, and he encouraged his brother to open a construction company together and undertake the project of the Nice Institute of Technology, gradually putting on financial embarrassment, and the elder brother bought a small villa in Nice, and his mother, younger brother, and sister all had a good place to live.

It was in this cottage that Wallace read extensively according to his interests, including The Remains of the Origins of Natural History, which collected some of the major contemporary theories, from the origin of stars to the process of species mutation. and Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin's most famous book, which chronicles his discoveries related to biology, geology and anthropology during his five-year voyage around the world, demonstrating Darwin's keen observation. And "Principles of Geology", which is the work of the British geologist Charles? Lyle's famous book. In his book, Lyell expounds the uniformitarian view that the formation of mountains and rivers is the result of accumulation over a long period of time.

Inspired by traveling naturalists such as Charles Darwin, the biologist Humboldt, the second known as Columbus, and the geologist, Wallace also decided to embark on a scientific voyage. His destination was the Amazon jungle in Brazil in search of evidence of species variation.

From 1848 to 1852, he and his companions went on their own expeditions, meeting regularly for discussions. Traveling naturalists are adventurers, Wallace's younger brother, who joined in '49, died of yellow fever two years later, and in '52 Wallace was caught in a fire while returning home on the brig Helen, and all the most interesting geological, animal, and botanical specimens he had collected in the past year sank into the sea, and only a few of the notes and manuscripts were salvaged. And he almost lost his life. After a dozen days in a lifeboat, the traveller was rescued by the already crowded brig Jorderson and finally returned to London on October 1 this year.

Fortunately, Wallace insured his travels, and thanks to some insurance companies, he did not end up on the streets. A science-loving person like Wallace would of course choose the Telegraph as his primary source of news, and the Telegraph has always regarded popular science as its mission, rarely making bloody news such as murder and cheating, and sparing no effort to give a large page to the progress of science.

Wallace saw the Telegraph's announcement that Downing was recruiting botanists to transplant rubber trees in the Straits Settlements, and felt that this was a good opportunity, because the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia were as famous as the Amazon rainforests, rich in species, and a paradise for naturalists. In his eyes, Downing was a first-class scientist and industrialist, and he immediately saw that it was a good place to successfully transplant rubber trees.

Downing prepared a sumptuous Italian Lombard meal for Wallace and seven other young and vigorous explorers in the "State Ballroom", and his grand ceremony was no less than that of the Queen, Prime Minister, and others, showing his great admiration for these heroic travelers. （http：／／.）。

Downing has a certain understanding of the 8 applicants, and personally gives them a brief introduction one by one, these 8 Donkey Kongs, are not only scholars who have a certain research on botany, but also will become Reuters science reporters, Downing took out everyone's favorite Leica prototype for them to see, this is the small line of Reuters reporters.

He assures that in a month's time, when the Leica cameras are mass-produced, each of them will receive a Leica camera and enough consumables for them to capture the most important moments in the scientific voyage.

This is really a great treasure from heaven, and the travelers are happy and excited to think that this little camera is the perfect tool for that stunning photo of Princess Victoria.

They read this rare treasure while eating, and everyone who got their hands on it was reluctant to give up.

Downing offered each of the eight botanists 10,000 seeds and £1,000 in start-up capital, and they would each lead a team to develop their own estates and plant the rubber trees in what they thought was the best and fastest way to spread the risk and motivate the young men to use their brains to find ways to improve their survival rates. Downing claimed that in the future, a portion of the proceeds from these rubber plantations would be used as a natural science fund to benefit them all. No more worries about illness, shipwrecks, etc.

Of course, they are free to explore and travel around Southeast Asia once they have arranged their plantations, and they don't have to watch the trees every day.

Among these 8, 4 are concentrating on making the plantation well, and they have more intention of making profits, and Downing is more optimistic about their estate, and it is estimated that they are not even bothered to go to the scientific expedition.