In the 1880s, Alfred Russell' Wallace, great British biologist who originated independently the theory of natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin, visited the U. S. He lectured at a small agricultural college in Kansas, stayed at the house of the college president. One student who listened to him with particularly wide-eyed wonder was the president's son, David Fairchild, who had already resolved to be a botanist, was studying parasitic fungi and the wind-borne movements of Kansas tumbleweed.
After Wallace's unforgettable visit, David's Uncle Byron, a botanist, took him to...
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