176 EVOLUTION [Chap.III 



Letter 118 To H. W. Bates. 1 



Down, Nov. 22nd [i860]. 

 I thank you sincerely for writing to me and for your very 

 interesting letter. Your name has for very long been familiar 

 to me, and I have heard of your zealous exertions in the 

 cause of Natural History. But I did not know that you had 

 worked with high philosophical questions before your mind. 

 I have an old belief that a good observer really means a good 

 theorist, 2 and I fully expect to find your observations most 

 valuable. I am very sorry to hear that your health is 

 shattered ; but I trust under a healthy climate it may be 

 restored. I can sympathise with you fully on this score, for 

 I have had bad health for many years, and fear I shall ever 

 remain a confirmed invalid. I am delighted to hear that you, 

 with all your large practical knowledge of Natural History, 

 anticipated me in many respects and concur with me. As 

 you say, I have been thoroughly well attacked and reviled 

 (especially by entomologists — VVestwood, Wollaston, and 

 A. Murray have all reviewed and sneered at me to their 

 hearts' content), but I care nothing about their attacks ; 

 several really good judges go a long way with me, and I 

 observe that all those who go some little way tend to go 

 somewhat further. What a fine philosophical mind your 

 friend Mr. Wallace has, and he has acted, in relation to me, 

 like a true man with a noble spirit. I see by your letter that 

 you have grappled with several of the most difficult problems, 

 as it seems to me, in Natural History— such as the distinctions 



1 Henry Walter Bates (1825-92) was born at Leicester, and after an 

 apprenticeship in a hosiery business he became a clerk in Allsopp's 

 brewery. He did not remain long in this uncongenial position, for in 

 1848 he embarked for Par£ with Mr. Wallace, whose acquaintance he 

 had made at Leicester some years previously. Mr. Wallace left Brazil 

 after four years' sojourn, and Bates remained for seven more years. He 

 suffered much ill-health and privation, but in spite of adverse circum- 

 stances he worked unceasingly : witness the fact that his collection of 

 insects numbered 14,000 specimens. He became Assistant Secretary to 

 the Royal Geographical Society in 1864, a post which he filled up to the 

 time of his death in 1892. In Mr. Clodd's interesting memoir prefixed 

 to his edition of the Naturalist on the Amazons, 1892, the editor pays a 

 warm and well-weighed tribute to Mr. Bates's honourable and lovable 

 personal character. See also Life and Letters, II., p. 3S0. 



* For an opposite opinion, see Letter 13, p. 39. 



