The Naturalist on the River Amazons

by Henry Walter Bates




AN APPRECIATION

BY CHARLES DARWIN
Author of "The Origin of Species," etc.

From Natural History Review, vol. iii. 1863.

IN April, 1848, the author of the present volume left England in
company with Mr. A. R. Wallace--"who has since acquired wide fame
in connection with the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection"--on
a joint expedition up the river Amazons, for the purpose of
investigating the Natural History of the vast wood-region
traversed by that mighty river and its numerous tributaries. Mr.
Wallace returned to England after four years' stay, and was, we
believe, unlucky enough to lose the greater part of his
collections by the shipwreck of the vessel in which he had
transmitted them to London. Mr. Bates prolonged his residence in
the Amazon valley seven years after Mr. Wallace's departure, and
did not revisit his native country again until 1859. Mr. Bates
was also more fortunate than his companion in bringing his
gathered treasures home to England in safety. So great, indeed,
was the mass of specimens accumulated by Mr. Bates during his
eleven years' researches, that upon the working out of his