MEMOIR. Ixi 
HT. W. Bates to Charles Darwin. 
‘* KING STREET, LEICESTER, October 17th, 1862. 
** MY DEAR MR. DARWIN, 
‘«T was as pleased as a child this morning to have a letter from you 
again... . Regarding my book, Iam thoroughly ashamed not to have finished 
the work after twelve months employed on it. I thinkI told you that it would 
be only external stimulus that would impel me on with it, I felt so disinclined 
to write. I hoped, however, having once commenced, a liking for the task 
would set in ; but ithas not beenso. I have been working and bodging against 
inclination ever since April last. You wili be glad to hear that now six 
hundred pages are finished out of the seven hundred of which the work is to 
consist. Two-thirds of the MS. have been delivered to Murray. Afterthe last 
receipt M. writes: ‘It keeps up to the mark.’ With the autumnal weather 
a better activity has arisen, and I am writing rapidly. 
‘*T must plead as a little excuse for slowness an interruption caused by re- 
writing and passing through the press my memoir in Zzmmean Transactions. 
This took me three hours a day for six weeks, from June to August... . I 
feel now that the memoir does not express my thoughts with the force and 
clearness that I think I could impart were I allowed to re-write the whole. IL 
shall be most anxious to have your deliberate criticism on it. I should think 
it is now about ready for distribution. I have matter for another better treatise 
on the origin of species out of local varieties. 
‘Mr. Edwin Brown is manager in a large bank at Burton. I have known 
him twenty-one years; he was my earliest naturalist friend. I have always 
looked on him as a man of extraordinary intellectual ability. I have given 
him my notions on carabi He is amassing material (specimens) at very 
great expense. He has never travelled: this is a great deficiency, for the re- 
lations of species to closely allied species and varieties cannot, I think, be 
thoroughly understood without personal observation in different countries... . 
‘Yours sincerely, 
**H. W. BATES.” 
Bates had gladly availed himself of Darwin’s offer to introduce 
him to Murray, who also read the earlier chapters of the book 
and endorsed Darwin’s commendation. Murray’s letters to Bates 
evidence an almost paternal interest in the progress of the work, 
and, on its completion, the high estimate which he formed of it was 
shown in his according to Bates terms equal to those which he made 
with authors of established reputation.* 
At last the Waturalist on the Amazons, issued in two volumes, 
was published in January 1863, and leapt at once into the front rank 
amongst books of travel and original observation. 
The style is well-nigh perfect. So vividly does it bring before 
* This is not the place to print the business letters which Bates has preserved ; suffice 
it that they tell of payment on the most liberal scale to him for the less important work. 
of revision of other books. 
