ixxviii MEMOIR. 
the neatness and clearness of his writing, even in the roughest 
memoranda. He had time to spare equally for the visitor who 
wanted to know the name of an obscure beetle, or the best route 
across a continent. His original work in classification brought him 
a host of inquiries from all parts, and of requests from collectors to 
name their specimens ; and to these he responded without fee or 
reward, save in the advancement of the science he loved. The growth 
of his collection, largely increased by retaining duplicates of 
specimens sent to him, caused the absorption of most of his leisure 
in the work of classification and arrangement, and yet, with these 
constant demands upon him, he found time to publish his results. 
Of this unwearying industry the numerous papers in the Journal 
of the Entomological Society, in the Annals and Magazine of 
Natural History, in the Entomologist, and other serials, from 1860 
until 1891, are evidence. 
In 1864 he ‘‘ contributed to the Yournal of Entomology an important 
paper on the classification of the Rhopalocera, or butterflies, which was an 
enlargement and elaboration of similar views which he had published three 
years previously. In entomology, as in most other branches of zoology, 
systematic classifications are often unavoidable but convenient modes of 
arrangement for the monographer rather than the elucidation of a natural 
system on evolutionary principles, though the beauty of a classification is 
shown when based on those characters which exhibit a progressive modifica- 
tion in structure, or, in other words, exhibit the evolution from a simple to a 
more specialised type. The epoch-making character of the arrangement 
proposed by Mr. Bates is best proved by the fact that it has since been 
universally followed, and this in recent years when a large number of 
faunistic works on the Rhopfalocera have been written in various lands, and 
with a wealth of material formerly unknown. This classification reversed 
the previously understood sequence in the families, and still remains the 
most philosophical and natural system yet attained in the arrangement of 
any order of the Insecta. This paper is a model of the philosophical 
treatment of a purely systematic subject.’’* 
The limited time which Bates’s new duties left at his disposal 
made it no longer possible for him to keep up the study of two 
such enormous orders as the Lepidoptera and the Coleoptera. As he 
had practically finished his work of classification of butterflies, he sold 
his fine collection to Messrs. Godman and Salvin, and thenceforth 
devoted himself to beetles.| That order of insects, from their 
* W. L. Distant, in Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., April 1892, p. 252. 
+ M. René Oberthiir, of Rennes, to whom Bates sold all the Longzcorns in the 
autumn of 1891, has acquired the remainder of the collection, thus securing it, as Bates 
desired, from being dispersed. 
