b's0.4 MEMOIR. 
Bates sailed for England on June 2nd, 1859. Ina letter written 
to his parents four days before he embarked, he bids them good- 
bye till they see “an oldish, yellow-faced man in big whiskers (I 
have a moustache now, but I shall perhaps shave that off) make 
his appearance in King Street, Leicester.” In the exquisite words 
which close his aaa, he tells with what mingled feelings 
he looked from the deck of the ship, the evening before he sailed, 
on the “glorious forest” for which he had “so much love,” and to 
explore which he “had devoted so many years.” For he was 
quitting “a land of perpetual summer ” to return to a home “ under 
crepuscular skies,” where “chilly springs and sloppy summers” 
prevailed, but where, amidst civilised life, with its nutrition of “ feel- 
ings, tastes, and intellect,’ he was to find more enduring charm 
than amidst impenetrable forests and mighty waters. 
On his arrival in England, he set to work upon his extensive 
collections. The larger portion of these gradually passed into 
private hands in different parts of Europe. Those which had been 
purchased by the British Museum had the advantage of his detailed 
arrangement, involving frequent journeys to London, where, as will 
be seen, after vain attempts to procure permanent employment as 
a naturalist, he finally settled. Meanwhile his pen was as busy as 
his hand in communicating the results of his classificatory work to 
learned societies. In March 1860 (four months after the publica- 
tion of the Orzgin of Species, it may not be amiss to note) he began 
a series of papers entitled “ Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the 
Amazon Valley,” which were printed in the Zvansactions of the 
Entomological Society. These were at first devoted to a new 
classification of the Diurnal Lepidoptera (in untechnical language, 
butterflies), founded chiefly on the structure of the anterior legs, 
a classification which has been very generally adopted by ento- 
mologists.* 
As the subjoined letters show, Bates, not being, as Darwin said, 
of “the mob of naturalists without souls,” did not stop at classifi- 
cation, but passed on to the consideration of larger questions to 
which it and other evidence pointed. -He had the saving grace of 
the sense of relation, lacking which, the observer only “sees men 
as trees walking.” In the words of Professor Huxley in his last 
presidential address to the Royal Society: “That which the 
investigator perceives depends much more on what lies behind his 
sense-organs than on the object in front of them.” In the papers 
* Trans. Entomological Society, vol. v., 1858-61, p. 350. 
