254 MY LIFE 



During my residence at Neath I kept up some correspon- 

 dence with H. W. Bates, chiefly on insect collecting. We 

 exchanged specimens, and, I think, in the summer of 1847, 

 he came on a week's visit, which we spent chiefly in beetle- 

 collecting and in discussing various matters, and it must have 

 been at this time that we talked over a proposed collecting 

 journey to the tropics, but had not then decided where to go. 

 Mr. Bates' widow having kindly returned to me such of my 

 letters as he had preserved, I find in them some references to 

 the subjects in which I was then interested. I will, therefore, 

 here give a few extracts from them. 



In a letter written November 9, I finish by asking : " Have 

 you read ' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation/ or is 

 it out of your line? " And in my next letter (December 28), 

 having had Bates' reply to the question, I say : " I have rather a 

 more favourable opinion of the ' Vestiges ' than you appear to 

 have. I do not consider it a hasty generalization, but rather as 

 an ingenious hypothesis strongly supported by some striking 

 facts and analogies, but which remains to be proved by more 

 facts and the additional light which more research may throw 

 upon the problem. It furnishes a subject for every observer of 

 nature to attend to; every fact he observes will make either 

 for or against it, and it thus serves both as an incitement to 

 the collection of facts, and an object to which they can be 

 applied when collected. Many eminent writers support the 

 theory of the progressive development of animals and plants. 

 There is a very philosophical work bearing directly on the 

 question — Lawrence's ' Lectures on Man ' — delivered before 

 the Royal College of Surgeons, now published in a cheap form. 

 The great object of these ' Lectures ' is to illustrate the differ- 

 ent races of mankind, and the manner in which they probably 

 originated, and he arrives at the conclusion (as also does 

 Pritchard in his work on the ' Physical History of Man ') that 

 the varieties of the human race have not been produced by 

 any external causes, but are due to the development of certain 

 distinctive peculiarities in some individuals which have there- 

 after become propagated through an entire race. Now, I 

 should say that a permanent peculiarity not produced by 



