From Henry Walter Bates 28 January 1865
Royal Geographical Society | 15, Whitehall Place, S.W.
Jan 28 1865
My dear Mr Darwin
The receipt of a letter from you was an unlooked-for pleasure.1 I have had news of your health from time to time, having seized all opportunities of asking from persons likely to know, & had heard lately of your slight improvement. Let us hope it may continue.
You are very kind to enquire after my personal affairs. I have no doubt Dr Hooker2 has kept you well acquainted with what is done & said in Natural History circles & the perusal of the Journals &c keeps you well-informed about the rest. Perhaps there may be a few Entomological items bearing upon Darwinian views, which have not yet fallen in your way.
I was much gratified on receiving the Berlin “Bericht for Entomology 1862” (you know the Natural History reports appear in Wiegmann’s Archives) to find at the very commencement a flattering notice of our paper on the mimetic Butterflies.3 These reports originally were written by Erichson & are now written by Gerstaecker.4 They are usually very skilfully & not very mercifully done. Gerstaecker has seized all the essential points of my paper & repeats them with an evident bias in their favour.5 Being the highest Entomological tribunal I think you will like to have the testimony of this “Bericht” to the absence of, at any rate, any important errors in my facts & arguments.
You will be glad to hear that I like my present position very much.6 I should have preferred a Natural History appointment but I had no chance of one & the birth of one sweet little child with expectation if another forced upon me cogent arguments for accepting the first thing that offered.7 I hope besides to do a little in improving this great Society & assisting Naturalists in travelling.8 The Mantidæ monograph progresses, but about this I will speak in a future letter.9
My dear Mr Darwin | Yours sincerely | H W Bates
Footnotes
Bibliography
Bates, Henry Walter. 1861. Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidæ. [Read 21 November 1861.] Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 23 (1860–2): 495–566.
Bates, Henry Walter. 1892. The naturalist on the River Amazons. A record of adventures, habits of animals, sketches of Brazilian and Indian life, and aspects of nature under the equator, during eleven years of travel. With a memoir of the author by Edward Clodd. Reprint of the first edition. London: John Murray.
Collected papers: The collected papers of Charles Darwin. Edited by Paul H. Barrett. 2 vols. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1977.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Curle, Richard. 1954. The Ray Society: a bibliographical history. London: Ray Society.
Mill, Hugh Robert. 1930. The record of the Royal Geographical Society 1830–1930. London: Royal Geographical Society.
Origin 4th ed.: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 4th edition, with additions and corrections. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1866.
‘Review of Bates on mimetic butterflies’: [Review of "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley", by Henry Walter Bates.] [By Charles Darwin.] Natural History Review n.s. 3 (1863): 219–24. [Collected papers 2: 87–92.]
Woodcock, George. 1969. Henry Walter Bates, naturalist of the Amazons. London: Faber & Faber.
Summary
Pleased at receiving CD’s letter.
HWB informs him of favourable notice of the mimetic paper [in Wiegmann’s Arch. Naturgesch. 29 (1863) pt 2: 315–19].
He is pleased with his post [Asst. Sec. of Royal Geographical Society].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4756
- From
- Henry Walter Bates
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- R. Geogr. Soc.
- Source of text
- DAR 160: 79
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4756,” accessed on 19 October 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4756.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 13