"I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of [Neococytius] cluentius from South America in the collection of the British Museum, and find it to be nine inches and a quarter long! One from tropical Africa ([Xanthopan] morganii) is seven inches and a half. A species having a proboscis two or three inches longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers of Angræcum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; and naturalists who visit that island should search for it with as much confidence as astronomers searched for the planet Neptune - and they will be equally successful!"
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"Creation by law". Quarterly Journal of Science 4: 470–488 (1867); The hawkmoth of Madagascar was later found and described in 1903, under the taxon name praedicta in reference to Wallace's quote.
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Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (January 8 1823 – November 7 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He independently proposed a theory of natural selection ("On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type") which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own more developed and researched theory sooner than he had intended. Wallace is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".
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