Mimicry 287 



man who has done most to support and extend the theory. My kind 

 friend has given that copy to me ; it bears the inscription : 



Only a year and a half after the publication of the Origin, we find 

 that Darwin wrote to Bates on the subject which was to provide such 

 striking evidence of the truth of Natural Selection: "I am glad 

 to hear that you have specially attended to 'mimetic' analogies a 

 most curious subject ; I hope you publish on it. I have for a long 

 time wished to know whether what Dr Collingwood asserts is true 

 that the most striking cases generally occur between insects in- 

 habiting the same country 1 ." 



The next letter, written about six months later, reveals the re- 

 markable fact that the illustrious naturalist who had anticipated 

 Edward Forbes in the explanation of arctic forms on alpine heights 2 , 

 had also anticipated H. W. Bates in the theory of Mimicry : " What a 

 capital paper yours will be on mimetic resemblances ! You will make 

 quite a new subject of it. I had thought of such cases as a difficulty ; 

 and once, when corresponding with Dr Collingwood, I thought of your 

 explanation ; but I drove it from my mind, for I felt that I had not 

 knowledge to judge one way or the other 3 ." 



Bates read his paper before the Linnean Society, Nov. 21, 1861, 

 and Darwin's impressions on hearing it were conveyed in a letter 

 to the author dated Dec. 3: "Under a general point of view, I am 

 quite convinced (Hooker and Huxley took the same view some months 

 ago) that a philosophic view of nature can solely be driven into 

 naturalists by treating special subjects as you have done. Under 

 a special point of view, I think you have solved one of the most 

 perplexing problems which could be given to solve 4 ." The memoir 



1 The letter is dated April 4, 1861. More Letters, i. p. 183. 



2 i i W as forestalled in only one important point, which my vanity has always made 

 me regret, namely, the explanation by means of the Glacial period of the presence of 

 the same species of plants and of some few animals on distant mountain summits and in 

 the arctic regions. This view pleased me so much that I wrote it out in extenso, and 

 I believe that it was read by Hooker some years before E. Forbes published his celebrated 

 memoir on the subject. In the very few points in which we differed, I still think that I 

 was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in print to my having independently 

 worked out this view." Autobiography, Life and Letters, i. p. 88. 



3 The letter is dated Sept. 25, 1861 : More Letters, i. p. 197. 

 * Life and Letters, n. p. 378. 



