In his review of Darwin's Ghosts (Nature 485, 171–172; 2012), Andrew Berry misleadingly writes, “Even Alfred Russel Wallace, co-author of the paper that first unveiled evolution by natural selection, has mostly disappeared from view”, adding, “The outcomes [of an intervention by colleagues] were a paper co-published by Darwin and Wallace in the Journal of the Linnean Society in July 1858, and Origin in November the next year.”

The terms 'co-author' and 'co-publish' wrongly imply that Darwin and Wallace were joint authors of a single paper and joint publishers of the (incorrectly titled) journal.

The facts were well stated by geologist Charles Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker, who on 1 July 1858 presented to the Linnean Society an essay by Wallace, together with two contributions from Darwin (extracts from a manuscript on species and an abstract of a letter to US botanist Asa Gray). Lyell and Hooker wrote: “The accompanying papers [...] all relate to the same subject, viz. the Laws which affect the Production of Varieties, Races, and Species, [and] contain the results of the investigations of two indefatigable naturalists, Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Alfred Wallace.” These three 'papers' were first printed in 1858 (J. Proc. Linn. Soc. 3, 45–62; 1858), and later in volume form in 1859.