MODERN EVOLUTION. ^5 



escaped, as often as the long working hours then 

 prevailing allowed, into the fields with his collecting- 

 box. Both schoolmaster and shopman were ardent 

 naturalists, Mr. Wallace, as he tells us, being at that 

 time " chiefly interested in botany," but he after- 

 ward took up his friend's favourite pursuit of 

 entomology. The writer, when preparing his memoir 

 of Bates (which prefaces a reprint of the first edition 

 of the delightful Naturalist on the Amazons), learned 

 from Mr. Wallace that in early life he did not keep 

 letters from Bates and other correspondents. But, 

 fortunately, among Bates's papers, there was a 

 bundle of interesting letters from Wallace written 

 between June, 1845, an( ^ October, 1847, from Neath, 

 in South Wales, to which town he had removed. 

 In one of these, dated the 9th of November, 1845, 

 Wallace asks Bates if he had read the Vestiges of the 

 Natural History of Creation, and a subsequent letter 

 indicates that Bates had not formed a favourable 

 opinion of the book. A later letter is interesting 

 as conveying an estimate of Darwin. " I first," Wal- 

 lace says, " read Darwin's Journal three or four years 

 back, and have lately re-read it. As the journal of 

 a scientific traveller, it is second only to Humboldt's 

 Personal Narrative; as a work of general interest, 

 perhaps superor to it. He is an ardent admirer and 

 most able supporter of Mr. Lyell's views. His style 

 of writing I very much admire, so free from all 

 labour, affectation, or egotism, yet so full of interest 

 and original thought." 



