XX MEMOIR. 
forest whenever the scant holidays of those pre-early-closing times 
permitted, and soon filled with specimens the drawers of the 
furniture in the little room which his father had “ apportioned to 
him as a study.” All the more important captures were described 
in detail as to species, habitat and circumstance, a practice which, 
no doubt, “contributed largely to his after facility in description, 
which was remarkable.” All that he did was done—as in well-nigh 
every branch of science the most important work has been done— 
with primitive apparatus, and with but slender help from without 
But therein lay the splendid schooling which developed capacity 
and resource, and gave us the WVaturalist on the Amazons. 
Alderman Gregory died before Bates’s term of apprenticeship 
had expired; and, as evidencing his mastery of aught that he 
undertook, he managed the business for a time on behalf of the 
son. He left it to take a clerkship, first at Messrs. Bedell’s, then 
at Messrs. Wheeler’s, and, finally, at Allsopp’s brewery at Burton- 
on-Trent. But the work was uncongenial ; it fretted him, and 
aggravated his gastric trouble. As often as he could he escaped 
from the desk to the open air, and some results of his entomolo- 
gising are found in a paper on “Coleoptera in the Neighbour- 
hood of Burton-on-Trent,” published in the Zoologzst (vol. vi., 1848, 
p- 1997). Mr. Edwin Brown,* who obtained him the situation at 
Allsopp’s, is referred to as the captor of several species scheduled 
in the paper. 
Among the friendships which Bates made in Leicester was one 
which had momentous influence on his future; namely, that of 
Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, then English master in the Collegiate 
School. Mr. Wallace tells us that he was at that time chiefly 
interested in botany, but afterwards took up _ beetle-collecting. 
Among an interesting batch of letters preserved by Bates are a 
few from Mr. Wallace, written between June 1845 and October 
1847, after he had removed to Neath, in South Wales. If they do 
not indicate the celebrity to which their writer has attained, they 
show what ardour was imported into a pursuit, perseverance in 
which has given him a foremost place among biologists. In a letter 
dated November gth, 1845, Wallace asks Bates if he has read 
Vestiges of the Natural Hitstory of Creation (published in 1844), and 
a subsequent letter indicates that Bates had not formed a favour- 
able opinion of that unsatisfactory, though useful, book—useful as 
opening people’s eyes to problems of the modifiability of species. 
* See Bates’s letter to Darwin, zz/fra, p. Ixi. 
