Early Years 



him mentioned as an enthusiastic entomologist and met 

 him at the Library. '^ Bates was at this time employed 

 by his father, who was a hosiery manufacturer, and he 

 could therefore only devote his spare time to collecting 

 beetles in the surrounding neighbourhood. The friend- 

 ship brought new interests into both lives, and though 

 Wallace was obliged a few months later to leave Leicester 

 and return to his old work of surveying (owing to the 

 sudden death of his brother William, whose business affairs 

 were left in an unsatisfactory condition and needed personal 

 attention), he no longer found in it the satisfaction he had 

 previously experienced, and his letters to Bates expressed 

 the desire to strike out on some new line, one which would 

 satisfy his craving for a definite pursuit in the direction of 

 natural science. 



Somewhere about the autumn of 1847, Bates paid a visit 

 to Wallace at Neath, and the plan to go to the Amazon which 

 had been slowly forming itself at length took shape, due to 

 the perusal of a little book entitled ^^ A Voyage up the Kiver 

 Amazon,'' by W. H. Edwards. Further investigations showed 

 that this would be particularly advantageous, as the district 

 had only been explored by the German zoologist, von Spix, 

 and the botanist von Martins, in 1817-20, and subsequently 

 by Count de Castelnau. 



During this interval we find, in a letter to Bates, the 

 following allusion to Darwin, which is the first record of 

 Wallace's high estimate of the man with whom his own 

 name was to be dramatically associated ten years later. 

 *' I first," he says, '^ read Darwin's Journal three or four 

 years ago, and have lately re-read it. As the journal of a 

 scientific traveller it is second only to Humboldt's Narra- 

 tive; as a work of general interest, perhaps superior 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 



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