74 THE entomologist's record. 



too despondent an attitude is assumed. A study of the Transactions 

 of the Entouioloffiral Society of London from 1858 onwards will reveal 

 numerous papers by well-known adherents of the new views, such as 

 H. W. Bates, A. R. Wallace, and Sir J. Lubbock. One paper of H. 

 W. Bates on South American butterflies is of peculiar interest. It 

 was written as a letter to Adam White, from Ega, on the Upper Amazon, 

 on May 20th, 1857, over a year before the Darwin- Wallace paper on 

 natural selection was read before the Linnean Society on July 1st, 

 1858. Mr. Bates' letter is published as the first paper in vol. v of 

 series ii (1858-1861) of thQ Transactions. Speaking of the Heliconiidae, 

 he says : " This family I look upon as mostly a modern creation, the 

 species unfixed, very susceptible of change, in conjunction with the 

 least modification of local circumstance ; but these theoretical notions 

 I suppose you do not care about." This must be one of the first, if 

 not the very first expression of opinion in favour of evolution pub- 

 lished by a London scientific society. Not only did the Entomo- 

 logical Society publish a large number of papers by these great 

 pioneers, but again and again they filled the most important offices. 

 Thus, although Bates was a corresponding member of the Society when 

 he wrote the paper from which I have quoted, he was on the Council 

 in 1864, 1866, 1867, 1872, 1877, was a Vice-President in 1870, 

 1873, 1876, 1879, 1880, and President in 1868, 1869, and 1878. 

 Wallace was a member of Council in 1866, 1872, Vice-President in 

 1864, 1869, and President in 1870, 1871. Lubbock was a Vice- 

 President in 1862, 1868, and 1881, and President in 1866, 1867, 

 1879, 1880. The majority of the senior members of the Society 

 were undoubtedly opposed to the new views, but there was evidently 

 no attempt to boycott those who were known as strong and convinced 

 supporters of them. 



Although Darwin had written in such depressing terms of the 

 entomologists in 1863, only four years later he went to the opposite 

 extreme in a letter to Professor Haeckel. Writing on May 21st, 1867, 

 he said : " No body of men were at first so much opposed to my views 

 as the members of the London Entomological Society, but now I am 

 assured that, with the exception of two or three old men, all the 

 members concur with me to a certain extent " {loc. cit., iii., 69). 

 The words " to a certain extent " are, of course, elastic, but, 

 stretching them to the utmost, it must be conceded that this 

 last letter is as optimistic as the former is pessimistic. The 

 members of the Society were fair, and gave a hearing and an im- 

 portant position to an opponent ; but he still remained an opponent. 

 A convinced evolutionist did not feel himself in the congenial society 

 of those who agreed with him in principle even if they differed in detail 

 in 1867, nor, for that matter, in 1877. By 1887 an immense improve- 

 ment had been effected, but Darwin's words could only be used of this 

 date by those of a very sanguine temperament. However, the changes 

 were well under weigh which were to make them entirely appropriate 

 before the end of the next decade. 



It is interesting to remember that the three epoch-making papers 

 on mimicry by H. W. Bates, A. R. Wallace, and R. Trimen appeared 

 respectively in 1862, 1866, and 1870, in the Transactions of the 

 Linnean Society and not in those of the Entomological Society. This 

 fact is no doubt partly due to the special suitability of the quarto form 



