182 Reviews. [Jan. 
ever be concealed from intelligent curiosity. The framers of theories, 
and the elaborators of grand generalizations, must necessarily own 
their dependence upon such self-sacrificing investigators, and the value 
of the facts accumulated by such men depends upon their own inhe- 
rent powers of observation, and the degree of intelligence and industry 
they bring to bear upon their self-imposed labours. And seldom 
indeed does it happen that these qualities are so admirably combined 
as they appear to be in one whose ardent thirst for natural knowledge 
impelled him to exile himself for eleven years in a tropical and 
unhealthy country, in order that he might revel in the rich prodigality 
of animal and vegetable life which characterizes the great valley of 
the Amazons—a region which, though far indeed from the comforts 
and necessities of civilization, may fitly be designated “ the Metropolis 
of Nature.” 
Mr. Bates embarked at Liverpool in the spring of 1848, in company 
with Mr. A. R. Wallace, for Para, the only port of entry to the vast 
region watered by the Amazons. The object which the travellers pro- 
posed to themselves was twofold—to make for themselves collections 
of specimens, consigning the duplicates to London, to be there dis- 
posed of in payment of expenses, and, to gather facts towards solving 
the problem of the “origin of species.” The first of these objects 
was attained in an eminent degree; for not only have Mr. Bates’s 
collections many a time and oft caused congregations of naturalists 
under the hammer of Mr. Stevens, but he astounds us with the state- 
ment of his ageregate results when he informs us, with truthful sim- 
plicity, that he obtained, during his eleven years’ sojourn, 14,000 
insects, and 712 other animals, of which startling total no less than 
8,000 were new to science. Never has it fallen to the lot of a single 
individual to bring so vast a contribution to systematic zoology, and 
it is a grand proof of the rare riches of the teeming district he so 
wisely selected for his exploration. 
With regard to the second object of the journey, while the results 
have not been so definite as those just glanced at, the two explorers 
arrived at some conclusions to which we shall refer in the course of 
the present article, and which, however widely they may differ from 
the views of another school, will, we venture to predict, be of consi- 
derable service in the ultimate advance of science. It is now a 
matter known to every one, that Mr. Wallace, after spending four years 
in South America with Mr. Bates, travelled to the East in search of 
new fields of exploration, and there, while lying stricken down by 
fever, he elaborated in his busy brain the theory afterwards pro- 
mulgated by Mr. Darwin in his work on ‘The Origin of Species.’ It, 
was this fact, and the communication of this hypothesis to Sir C. 
Lyell, which determined Mr. Darwin to bring his long-cherished views 
before the Linnean Society, and thereafter to publish the book which 
has been so fertile a source of scientific controversy. We may judge, 
therefore, that as far as Mr. Wallace is concerned, he considered that 
the facts he had collected threw some light upon the problem which 
they had charged themselves to illuminate. And in the work before 
us Mr. Bates proves himself an apt scholar and valuable ally of Mr. 
