LINNEAK SOCIETY OP LONDON. 6t 



and studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and G-lasgow, at 

 which latter he gained the Gold Medal for Botany in 1871. At 

 Glasgow he graduated three years later, and then pursued further 

 studies at "Wiirzburg, in 1875 entering the Indian Medical Service, 

 next as civil surgeon at Jessore, but gave this up on being ap- 

 pointed Professor of Physiology at the Medical College, Calcutta. 

 At the time of his death he was Secretary to the Surgeon-General 

 and Sanitary Commissioner, and had but just concluded his 

 travels with the Leprosy Commission, of which he was Secretary. 



The memoirs he published are to be found in the Scientific 

 Memoirs of the Medical Officers of the Army of India, in the 

 ' Journal of Botany,' and, perhaps the most important of all, 

 in our own Transactions. 



He was elected Fellow in 1890 ; and the papers from his pen 

 already alluded to gave promise of a career of great activity and 

 research, which his unlooked for and early death has destroyed. 



Heistit Walter Bates was born at Leicester on February 8th, 

 1825. Brought uj) by his father for a business career, he was 

 apprenticed, on leaving school at the age of fourteen, to a local 

 manufacturer. Notwithstanding his long working-hours, which 

 extended from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., young Bates lost no opportunity 

 of improving his mind and of making up for the deficiencies of 

 his education, often studying till midnight, and often rising at 

 daybreak to snatch the time before his daily work began. 



His taste for natural history, and especially for entomology, 

 developed speedily, and was without doubt fostered by his 

 friendship with Edwin Brown. He became an ardent collector 

 of Coleoptera, and published notes in the ' Zoologist ' upon the 

 species occurring in the neighbourhood of Leicester and iu 

 Charnwood Forest, his first communication appearing in 1843, 

 when he was about 18 years of age. About 1845 he made the 

 acquaintance of Alfred Bussel Wallace, who was then an English 

 master in a school at Leicester, interested in botany, but who was 

 led by the enthusiasm of his new-found friend to take up the 

 study of entomology. 



On the death of the manufacturer to whom Bates had been 

 apprenticed, he left Leicester, and obtained a clerkship in the 

 office of the Messrs. AUsopp, of Burton-on- Trent ; but the occu- 

 pation was not congenial to him, and he subsequently abandoned 

 commercial pusuits on the invitation of Mr. Wallace to join him 

 in an exploring expedition to the Amazons. 



The two friends arrived at Para in April 1818, and made joint 

 collections in that neighbourhood for nearly a year, when they 

 decided to separate. Bates left Para in November 1851 on his 

 now classical journey to Tapajos and the Upper Amazons, which 

 occupied seven years and a half, and during which he experienced 

 numberless privations and hardships. The narrative of his ad- 

 ventures is given in his delightful book ' The Naturalist on the 

 Amazons,' which was published at the special instigation of 



