Ch. XIV.] 1861—1871. 251 



(and I hope not exclusively under a personal point of view) I 

 could not resist venturing to thank you for the right good 

 service which you have done. Pray believe me, dear sir, 



Yours faithfully and obliged. 



It was a still more hopeful sign that work of the first rank 

 in value, conceived on evolutionary principles, began to be 

 published. 



My father expressed this idea in a letter to the late Mr. Bates.* 



" Under a general point of view, I am quite convinced 

 (Hooker and Huxley took the same view some months ago) 

 that a philosophic view of nature can solely be driven into 

 naturalists by treating special subjects as you have done." 



This refers to Mr. Bates' celebrated paper on mimicry, with 

 which the following letter deals : — 



Down Nov. 20 [1862]. 

 Dear Bates, — I have just finished, after several reads, your 

 paper.f In my opinion it is one of the most remarkable and 



* Mr. Bates is perhaps most widely known through his delightful The 

 Naturalist on the Amazons. It was with regard to this book that my 

 father wrote (April 1863) to the author: — " I have finished vol. i. My 

 criticisms may be condensed into a single sentence, namely, that it is the 

 best work of Natural History Travels ever published in England. Your 

 style seems to me admirable. Nothing can be better than the discussion 

 on the struggle for existence, and nothing better than the description of 

 the Forest scenery. It is a grand book, and whether or not it sells 

 quickly, it will last. You have spoken out boldly on Species; and 

 boldness on the subject seems to get rarer and rarer. How beautifully 

 illustrated it is." 



t Mr. Bates' paper, ' Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazons 

 Valley ' {Linn. Soe. Trans, xxiii. 1862), in which the now familiar subject 

 of mimicry was founded. My father wrote a short review of it in the 

 Natural History Beview, 1863, p. 219, parts of which occur almost 

 verbatim in the later editions of the Origin of Species. A striking 

 passage occurs in the review, showing the difficulties of the case from a 

 creationist's point of view : — 



"By what means, it may be asked, have so many butterflies of the 

 Amazonian region acquired their deceptive dress ? Most naturalists will 

 answer that they were thus clothed from the hour of their creation — an 

 answer which will generally be so far triumphant that it can be met only 

 by long-drawn arguments ; but it is made at the expense of putting an 

 effectual bar to all further inquiry. In this particular case, moreover, 

 the creationist will meet with special difficulties ; for many of the 

 mimicking forms of Leptalis can be shown by a graduated series to be 

 merely varieties of one species ; other mimickers are undoubtedly distinct 

 species, or even distinct genera. So again, some of the mimicked forms 

 can be shown to be merely varieties ; but the greater number must be 

 ranked as distinct species. Hence the creationist will have to admit that 

 some of these forms have become imitators, by means of the laws of 



