‘Letters from home, all pressing my return, have caused me to change my mind. Considering the unsatisfactory nature of my future prospects in this profession, I think I do better in returning to a more certain prospect of establishing myself. I have now, therefore, only one idea, that of returning to England ’”’ (Journal, January 2nd, 1851).

But the receipt of encouraging letters with remittances from Mr. Stevens a few days after this made him waver.

He left Ega in the following March, and, before embarking, sets down the net results of his labours:—

‘‘ Now being the end of my Amazons excursion, as I embark to-morrow for Para, I have made a calculation of the expenses and collections. I find I have taken 7553 specimens ofinsects, which at 4d. each will bring £125 175. 8d., and my expenses have been (including provisions for voyage to Para, which ° is a trifle) 600 milreis, or £467 10s. Stevens’s commission is 20 per cent., and commission for remitting money, with freight of boxes, etc., is about 5 per cent., thus leaving the produce of my collection, £94 9s. I then gain only £26 Igs. in one year eight months’”’ (Journal, March oth, 1851).

Bates reached the mouth of the Rio Negro on March 27th, and landed at Barra to visit old friends and hear the latest news. On the morning of April 18th the vessel anchored in front of the city of Para.

“Found Para about as usual, all old friends alive after the yellow fever. One letter for me from Mr. Stevens, with better news than ever: the Barra collection which I had calculated at £40 had already fetched £70. The first Ega collection, which I had calculated at £20—£34 18s., and the George Glen (?) collection, which I had calculated at £60—£72. The second Ega collection had been delivered all right and shipped for England. One new Callithea which I had taken at Ega had been figured and named by Hewitson as C. Batesig// 1"

This encouraging report, and an improved state of health due to better food, made Bates once more hesitate as to returning home. Just then a painful task fell to him. Wallace’s brother, who had arrived at Pard about three weeks before Bates, was seized with symptoms of the fever then raging in the city while the two were amusing themselves there. Bates took him to the house of a native friend, nursed him, slept by his side four nights, and then succumbed himself to what, happily, proved a milder form of the epidemic. Young Wallace grew worse, and after suffering the distressing agonies of the “black vomit,” died in a few days. Bates recovered sufficiently to be able to attend the funeral of this “unfortunate, good-hearted young fellow,” as he calls him in his journal. Happily for biological science, Bates finally decided to retrace his steps and explore in detail the whole valley of the Amazons. After spending some time in preparations for a long absence, he left Para in October 1851, and arrived at Santarem in November. He made that town his head-quarters for three years and a half, varying his stay by excursions into the interior. The most important of these, to which an entire chapter of his Travels is given, was up the Tapajos, where he reached a settlement of the Mundurucus, a leading Indian tribe, warlike, but industrious, and

well disposed towards the whites. But keenly as these detours interested him, the excessive heat, insalubrity of the tributaries, exposure, poor food, hard work, and anxiety, so impaired his health that he was glad to return to Santarem.* Thence, “from the picturesque, hilly country of the Tapajos, and its dark, streamless waters,” he migrated to “the boundless wooded plains and yellow turbid current of the upper Amazons or Solimoens,” finally settling at Ega, where he stayed four years—varied by many excursions into the neighbouring region—going in and out among the people as one of themselves, pursuing his way unhindered when once he had satisfied their curiosity as to why a man should come so far and stay so long merely to collect birds and gaudy butterflies! As to these last, the Indians “universally concluded that they were wanted as patterns for light-coloured calico-prints.” Scarcely anything was then known in Europe about the biology of that district, and therefore the collections made by Bates aroused great interest, “the name of Ega being quite a household word among a numerous class of naturalists, not only in England, but abroad, in consequence of the very large number of new species discovered” by him, and of the information gathered “concerning the structure, habits, instincts, and geographical distribution of certain oldest-known forms. Upwards of seven thousand species of insects alone were found in the neighbourhood of Ega, of which five hundred and fifty were distinct species of butterflies.” It is of these last that Bates penned the striking and pregnant sentences, which alone suffice to place him in the front rank of philosophical naturalists, and the value of which justifies repetition here.

*‘T paid especial attention to them,” he says, ‘‘having found that this tribe was better adapted than almost any other group of animals or plants to furnish facts in illustration of the modifications which all species undergo in nature, under changed local conditions. This accidental superiority is owing partly to the simplicity and distinctness of the specific characters of the insects, and partly to the facility with which very copious series of specimens can be collected and placed side by side for comparison. The distinctness of the specific characters is due probably to the fact that all the superficial signs of change in the organisation are exaggerated, and made unusually plain by affecting the framework, shape, and colour of the wings, which, as many anatomists believe, are magnified extensions of the skin around the breathing orifices of the thorax of the insects. These expansions

Among Bates’s letters of that period which are printed in the Zoologist is one dated June 4th, 1852, in which he sighs for “thermometer, barometer, quadrant,” etc., “all quite beyond the means of a poor man like myself” (vol. xi., p. 3897).

are clothed with minute feathers or scales, coloured in regular patterns, which vary in accordance with the slightest change in the conditions to which the species are exposed. It may be said, therefore, that on these expanded membranes Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of — species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole organic world; therefore, the study of butterflies—creatures selected as the types of airiness and frivolity—instead of being despised, will some day be valued as one of the most important branches of biological science.” *

Ega was then an alderman’s paradise, the staple food being turtles, costing about ninepence each. But Bates grew so sick of this diet that he often preferred to remain hungry. For two years he did not taste wheaten bread, using tapioca soaked in coffee as the best substitute. Such poor living, with other drawbacks and privations, brought about physical prostration and ultimate collapse.

Steamers were introduced on the Upper Amazons in 1853, and in November 1856 Bates availed himself of this improved means of transport. He embarked in the Zadatinga for the river Tunantins, and thence took a trading vessel to Fonte Boa, “the head-quarters of mosquitoes,” where he stayed till the following January. From this point he re-embarked in the steamer and landed at St. Paulo, four hundred miles from Ega by water, and one thousand eight hundred miles from Para. There, where “ five years would not have been sufficient to exhaust the treasures of its neighbourhood in zoology and botany,” he remained five months, when severe illness compelled him to abandon a cherished plan of proceeding to the very foot of the Andes. He returned invalided to Ega, still hoping “to gather the yet unseen treasures of the marvellous countries lying between Tabatinga and the slopes” of the great range. But his general health remained too weak to justify any further work of exploration, and on February 3rd, 1859, he left Ega, ev route for England, having spent eleven of the best years of his life within four degrees of the equator, to the permanent enrichment of our knowledge of one of the most interesting regions of the globe.

In an approximative enumeration of the number of species of the various classes obtained between 1848 and 1859 given in the preface to the Travels, the total is shown to reach 14,712, of which insects number 14,000, and mammals 52. The very small number

Infra, pp- 351-353-

is 2

of mammalian species is explained by the general poverty of Brazil in terrestrial mammals. It shares unduly in that world-wide zoological destitution which characterises the most recent geological periods. Of the foregoing total, not less, but probably more, than eight thousand of the species were wew ¢o science. This estimate, which was challenged by the authorities of the British Museum, is more than justified in the correspondence between Bates and Dr. (now Sir) Joseph D. Hooker, printed on page Ixv.

Bates arrived at Para on March 17th, 1859. Old friends there gave him a welcome, the warmth of which surprised him. In his modest assessment of his work he did not think that “a man who had spent seven and a half years in exploring the interior of the country, solely with scientific aims, should be somewhat of acuriosity.”

That his memory is cherished in the Amazons is shown in the following letter addressed to the foreign secretary of the Royal Geographical Society:—

‘‘PARIS: 66, RUE Mozart, Ze 8 Mars. ‘“*My Lorp, ‘On my arrival from Brazil, where I have been passing the last five months, I learn from the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society the sad news of Mr. Bates’s death. I feel the greatest grief for his loss, and I wish that not only his family, but also our Society, should rest assured that in all Brazil, and especially in the Amazons, his death will be deeply felt. Native of that vast and far-off province, asa child I learnt to admire the author of the Naturalist on the Amazons. Mr. Bates was one of the first to foretell the splendid future of the Amazonian valley, and to describe its bewildering splendours. Although his voyage to the Amazons was undertaken in his early manhood, time has not been able to efface his memory, and many an inhabitant of our regions still retains a vivid remembrance of the English naturalist. In 1889 I was fortunate enough to make his acquaintance, and great was my pleasure to find that he also remembered with delight his bold and perilous excursions in our forests, and recalled readily to mind episodes of that period of his life. On that occasion Mr. Bates offered me his portrait. I am convinced that the two provinces of Para and the Amazons will make it a point of honour to place in their Congress Halls a large-sized reproduction of this photograph, as a homage due alike to a modest savaz¢ and to English science. “In conclusion, may I ask your lordship to be the interpreter of my sentiments on this occasion towards our Society and the family of the illustrious deceased? ‘‘T have, etc.,

‘BARON DE SANTA ANNA NERY.

“* Corresponding Member of the Royal Geographical Society.” *

Printed in Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, April 1892.

b's0.4 MEMOIR.

Bates sailed for England on June 2nd, 1859. Ina letter written to his parents four days before he embarked, he bids them good-bye till they see “an oldish, yellow-faced man in big whiskers (I have a moustache now, but I shall perhaps shave that off) make his appearance in King Street, Leicester.” In the exquisite words which close his aaa, he tells with what mingled feelings he looked from the deck of the ship, the evening before he sailed, on the “glorious forest” for which he had “so much love,” and to explore which he “had devoted so many years.” For he was quitting “a land of perpetual summer ” to return to a home “ under crepuscular skies,” where “chilly springs and sloppy summers” prevailed, but where, amidst civilised life, with its nutrition of “ feelings, tastes, and intellect,’ he was to find more enduring charm than amidst impenetrable forests and mighty waters.

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