MEN OF SCIENCE IN LEICESTER AND LEICESTERSHIRE 87 
Insects frequenting Damp Places,’ dated Queen Street, 3 Jan., 1843, 
and printed in the first number of the Zoologist. 
A. R. Wallace had taken up botany and started an herbarium in 1840. 
They joined in the study of entomology and they both read Malthus on 
Population and Darwin’s Journal of a Naturalist. In 1848 they went 
together to the Amazons. Bates spent eleven years there, and in 1863 
published The Naturalist on the Amazons, having been urged to publish 
the book by Charles Darwin. In 1864 he became assistant-secretary to 
the Royal Geographical Society : ‘a post which, to the inestimable gain 
of the Society, and to the advantage of a succession of explorers, to whom 
he was alike Nestor and Mentor, he retained till his death’ (Encyclopedia 
Britannica, Article ‘ Bates, Henry Walter ’). 
LEICESTER LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 
So far these notes have been about men whose scientific studies were 
personal and shared, if shared at all, only by kinsfolk or private friends.* 
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century and in the first half of the 
nineteenth many local societies for co-operation in studies were formed. 
This movement was checked and suspended during part of that period 
by the shock of the French Revolution, by the long war which followed 
it, and by the bitter party spirit which prevailed after the war. 
Among the earliest of these societies was the Manchester Literary and 
Philosophical Society. It was founded in 1781. It lived through the 
troublous years. In 1835 George Shaw, M.D., who had been a member 
of the Manchester Society before he came thence to Leicester, and his 
friend, Mr. Alfred Paget, were the prime movers in the foundation of 
the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society.4 In 1837-38 this 
Society began to collect a museum. The collection rapidly increased. 
In 1849 it was presented to the town, formally accepted by the Mayor 
at a large gathering, and housed in the building (which a few years 
before had been built for the Proprietary School) purchased by the 
Town Council for what thus became the Town Museum. 
The Society had formed committees of its members to manage 
departments of its Museum before presenting it to the town. For a 
long time the connection between the Museum Committee of the Town 
Council and the Council of the Society continued to be very close indeed, 
the same persons being in many cases members of both. There can be 
little if any doubt that the ‘ Sectional Committees’ of the Society for 
the study of particular branches of Science, afterwards called simply 
the ‘ Sections,’ originated from the committees appointed for ‘ depart- 
ments’ of the Museum before it became the Town Museum. In the 
3 Some more of the early botanists, especially the Rev. W. H. Coleman and 
the Rev. A. Bloxam, whose works were used by the editors of The Flora of 
Leicestershire will be mentioned later. 
4 Prof. Sedgwick, at a dinner given to him in Leicester in October 1837, said : 
‘The additions made to the great stream of knowledge by societies formed in 
provincial towns were rich and copious. Manchester, from a period when it 
was not more extensive than Leicester, had taken the lead. Cambridge and 
Newcastle, York and Bristol, were following that bright example, he trusted that 
Leicester would soon distinguish itself in the same noble course.’ 
