MEMOIR. Ixxvii 
hints and suggestions to the authors of papers, and he smoothed over 
difficulties with never-failing tact. His own rich stores of information were 
invaluable to all who needed help in their work, and over and over again they 
enabled him to supply a missing clue in some difficult inquiry, or to elucidate 
and piece together isolated facts, and show their bearings on each other. In 
all their intercourse with him, his colleagues, as well as the general body of 
geographers and travellers, have always been as much impressed by his 
ability and knowledge, and by the soundness of his judgment, as by that 
sympathising and kindhearted way of giving his opinion or advice which 
endeared the late assistant-secretary to all Who came in contact with him.’’* 
The following letter has special interest as affording, incident- 
ally, an expression of the feelings with which Bates entered on his 
new duties :-— 
**15, WHITEHALL PLACE, S.W., Yaxuary 28th, 186s. 
‘““My DEAR MR. DARWIN, 
‘« The receipt of a letter from you was an unlooked-for pleasure. I 
have had news of your health from time to time, having seized all oppor- 
tunities of asking from persons likely to know, and had heard lately of your 
slight improvement. Let us hope it may continue. 
“You are very kind to inquire after my personal affairs. I have no 
doubt Dr. Hooker has kept you well acquainted with what is done and said 
in natural history circles, and the perusal of the journals, etc., keeps you 
well informed about the rest. Perhaps there may be a few entomological 
items bearing upon Darwinian views which have not yet fallen in your way. 
I was much gratified on receiving the Berlin Berzcht for Entomology, 1862 
(you know the natural history reports appear in Wiegmann’s Archives), 
to find at the very commencement a flattering notice of our paper on 
the mimetic butterflies. The reports are usually very skilfully and not very 
mercifully done. Gerstaecker has seized all the essential points of my 
paper, and repeats them with an evident bias in their favour. Being the 
highest entomological tribunal, I think you will like to have the testimony of 
this Bericht to the absence, at any rate, of any important errors in my 
facts and arguments. 
*“You will be glad to hear that I like my present position very much. 
I should have preferred a natural history appointment, but I had no chance 
of one, and the birth of one sweet little child, with expectation of another, 
forced upon me cogent arguments for accepting the first thing that offered. 
I hope besides to do a little in improving this great society, and assisting 
naturalists in travelling. 
“Yours sincerely, 
Soke, We, RATES? 
Bates’s power of work was enormous ; and so complete was his 
method, fostered by early business training, that, limited as was 
his leisure, he did nothing in a hurry ; one instance of this was 
* Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., April 1892, pp. 254, 255. 
