Background
Henry Walter Bates was born on February 8, 1825, in Leicester, England. He was the eldest son of Henry Bates, a hosiery manufacturer at Leicester.
1890
Henry Walter Bates by John Thomson, photogravure, the early 1890s.
Plate from Bates' 1862 paper "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon Valley: Heliconiidae".
Mechanic’s Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Bates took night classes at the local Mechanic’s Institute, where he excelled in Greek, Latin, French, drawing, and composition.
Royal Society of London, London, SW1 England, United Kingdom
Bates was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1881.
Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly London, W1 England, United Kingdom
In 1871 Bates was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society.
Henry Walter Bates, an English explorer and naturalist.
Henry Walter Bates, an English explorer and naturalist.
Henry Walter Bates, an English explorer and naturalist.
(One of the most impressive of all Victorian scientists bu...)
One of the most impressive of all Victorian scientists but also a marvellous writer, Bates' (1825-1892) account of his years in the upper reaches of the Amazon is almost too good to be true - a great monument to human inquisitiveness as he battles great hoards of malevolent reptiles and insects in his quest for ever more obscure specimens on ever more narrow and creeper-choked tributaries.
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1864
Henry Walter Bates was born on February 8, 1825, in Leicester, England. He was the eldest son of Henry Bates, a hosiery manufacturer at Leicester.
Henry received his elementary education in the schools there before attending Mr. G. Screaton’s boarding school at Billesden, a village about nine miles from Leicester. Although Bates was an excellent student, his formal education was terminated in midsummer 1838, and he was apprenticed to a local hosiery manufacturer, for whom he labored thirteen hours a day. His capacity for work was prodigious, however, and he also took night classes at the local Mechanic’s Institute, where he excelled in Greek, Latin, French, drawing, and composition. Later, while in South America, he taught himself German and Portuguese.
In addition to these activities, Bates was an avid entomologist and, with his brother Frederick, scoured the woods of nearby Charnwood Forest for specimens during his holidays. His earliest scientific work, a short paper on beetles (1843), was published in the first issue of The Zoologist when he was eighteen years old.
After his supervisor died several years before Bates’s apprenticeship was completed, Bates assumed management of the firm for the son before becoming a clerk in nearby Burton-on-Trent. He strongly disliked his work, however; entomology was a much more congenial occupation, and he habitually spent much of his time writing detailed accounts of his expeditions and captured treasures.
In 1844 (or 1845) Bates befriended Alfred Russel Wallace, a mutually beneficial act that profoundly influenced both their lives. Wallace was then a master at the Collegiate School at Leicester and in his spare time enthusiastically pursued his own amateurish interests in botany. Bates introduced him to entomology, and the two friends continued to correspond and exchange specimens after Wallace moved from Leicester early in 1845.
While exchanging specimens in 1847, Wallace audaciously suggested to Bates that they should travel to the tropical jungles to collect specimens, ship them home for sale, and gather facts “towards solving the problem of the origin of species” - a frequent topic of their conversations and correspondence. Wallace’s attention had been directed to South America by the vivid prose of William H. Edwards’ Voyage up the River Amazon, Including a Residence at Para (1847); conversations with the author increased their interest, as did Edward Doubleday of the British Museum, who showed them some exquisite new species of butterflies collected near Para (Belem), Brazil, and offered other encouragement. Arrangements were soon made, and after a swift voyage of thirty-one days, the two amateur naturalists disembarked on 28 May 1848 at Pard, near the mouth of the Amazon River.
Although Wallace returned to England in July 1852, Bates remained for a total of eleven years, exploring and collecting within four degrees of the equator. Frequently discouraged by his chronically destitute condition and his isolation, he was nevertheless held there by an intense passion for collecting: the “exquisite pleasure of finding another new species of these creatures supports one against everything.” Bates conservatively estimated that he had collected 14,712 animal species (primarily insects) while in South America; more than 8,000 of these were new to science. Despite the richness of his collections, he received a profit of only about £800 for his efforts - or about £73 a year.
From Pard Bates traveled almost 2,000 miles deep into the wilderness. He resided in Pard for a total of nearly eighteen months, returning there periodically for a few months after each of his shorter excursions to the interior. On 26 August 1848 Bates and Wallace embarked on a journey up the Tocantins River; they arrived in October 1849 at what was to be Bates’s headquarters for three years - Santarem, a small town of 2,500 inhabitants some 475 miles from the sea at the mouth of the Tapajds River. By mutual agreement, Bates and Wallace parted company on 26 March 1850 at Manaus, the latter departing for the Rio Negro. Manaus, at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the upper Amazon (Solimoes), was a classic hunting ground for naturalists, having been a favorite spot for the celebrated travelers J. B. von Spix and K. F. P. von Martius, who had stayed there in 1820. On 6 November 1851 Bates set out to explore the Tapajos and Solimbes river basins, spending a total of seven and one-half years there. His headquarters during his four and one-half years in the Solimoes area was at Ega, at the foot of the Andes. In September 1857 he plunged deep into the wilderness to Sao Paulo, some 1,800 miles from Pard. Finally, on 11 February 1859, Bates left Ega for Para and England, his chronically poor health at its nadir.
After arriving in England in the summer of 1859, Bates began work on his enormous collections under the influence of a specific biological concept. In the previous year the now famous papers of Charles Darwin had been presented to the Linnean Society of London, and in November 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Bates was an immediate convert and had some substantial and impressive evidence of his own to contribute to Darwin’s arguments. On 21 November 1861 Bates first expounded his ideas on mimicry in his famous paper “Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidae,” which he read before the Linnean Society. With typical enthusiasm for works by his followers, Charles Darwin commented that Bates’s article was “one of the most remarkable and admirable papers I have ever read in my life.”
Responding to Darwin’s exhortations, Bates published early in 1863 a two-volume narrative of his travels in South America, The Naturalist on the River Amazon. The Naturalist went through many editions and was translated into several languages; nevertheless, popular and remunerative as it was, Bates remarked that he would rather spend another eleven years on the Amazon than write another book.
In 1862 Bates failed to secure a position in the zoology department at the British Museum - a post that went instead to A. W. E. O’Shaughnessy, a poet who, Bates said, was probably sponsored by Richard Owen. In 1864, however, Bates was appointed an assistant secretary of the Royal Geographical Society of London, serving with distinction for twenty-eight years. Besides editing the Journal and Proceedings of the Society, as well as carrying on an immense correspondence with travelers and others throughout the world, Bates actually managed the Society and made arrangements for various meetings, including those held by the Geographical Section of the British Association.
During his tenure as assistant secretary, Bates’s published works were devoted almost exclusively to entomology, primarily systematics, and numerous editions of travel works, such as Peter E. Warburton’s Journey Across the Western Interior of Australia (1875), Thomas Belt’s The Naturalist in Nicaragua (1873), and six volumes of Cassell’s Illustrated Travels: A Record of Discovery, Geography and Adventure (1869-1875).
Bates was the first naturalist to venture a comprehensive scientific explanation for the phenomenon that he labeled “mimicry” (Batesian mimicry). Batesian mimicry should here be differentiated from Müllerian mimicry. Bates’s discussion of mimicry was unobtrusively buried in his classic article on the heliconid butterflies of the Amazon, which were frequently mimicked by counterfeits so perfect that even Bates was unable to distinguish them in flight. The Leptalides (Dismorphia) butterflies, although quite different structurally from the Heliconidae, are especially proficient mimics. Other examples abound. In various parts of the world beetles, spiders, flies, and grasshoppers mimic ants. While spiders may have a body configuration resembling that of ants, other mimics may use optical illusions to produce the appearance of a narrow antlike waist. Certain bees on the banks of the Amazon, as Bates observed, are also mimicked; indeed, many moths and longicorn beetles in the tropics mimic bees, wasps, and other hymenopterous insects. (Bates also adduced numerous examples of insects imitating inanimate objects.) In every case, the mimic benefited to some extent from protection afforded by the original.
Darwin was thoroughly delighted with Bates’s research on mimicry, for it fully corroborated his theory and presented him with an excellent opportunity to rebut his critics in a short, unsigned review in the Natural History Review for 1863. He confronted the creationists with the embarrassing case of the mimicking forms of Leptalides (Dismorphia) butterflies, which could be shown through a graduated series to be varieties of one species; other mimickers clearly were distinct varieties, species, or genera. To be logically consistent - and they were not always - the creationists had to admit that some mimickers had been formed by commonly observed variations, while others were specially created. They would further be required to admit that some of these forms were created in imitation of forms known to arise through the ordinary processes of variation.
The difficulties of such a position were insurmountable, and the arguments for Batesian mimicry were widely accepted. Moreover, A. R. Wallace soon extended these arguments in two excellent articles: “On the Phenomena of Variation and Geographical Distribution as Illustrated by the Papilionidae of the Malayan Region” (1865) and “Mimicry and Other Protective Resemblances Among Animals” (1867). Thereafter, the literature was rich with references to mimicry, reaching a high point toward the end of the century with extensive discussions by Wallace, Poulton, and Beddard.
On the other hand, Bates, the author of the theory of mimicry, never published an extensive review of the subject, nor did he ever again write a philosophical or interpretative paper comparable to his article on mimicry. Unable to spin hypotheses as easily as did Darwin and Wallace, he devoted himself instead to numerous works on systematic entomology, such as his catalog of the Erycinidae (Riodinidae) butterflies, the foundation upon which subsequent authors worked. After selling his collections of Lepidoptera, Bates concentrated on Coleóptera, especially Adephaga, Lamellicornia and Longicomia.
That Bates failed to produce further works comparable to those on mimicry and his Travels has generally been attributed to the press of his many duties at the Royal Geographical Society. However, the character of his later work on entomological systematics may have been strongly influenced by other factors as well. In his presidential address to the Entomological Society in 1878, Bates discussed the “prevailing exclusively descriptive character of the entomological literature of the day,” which he thought resulted primarily from the difficulty of describing the prodigious influx of newly discovered species. Nature was proving to be far more prolific, and her products more varied, than had previously been thought. “Thus our best working Entomologists are led to abandon general views from lack of time to work them out, and the consciousness that general views on the relations of forms and faunas are liable to become soon obsolete by the rapid growth of knowledge.” This, he felt, did not totally excuse the systematists’ excessive narrowness, for it led them to neglect natural affinities that greatly illuminated evolution, which in his opinion was the greatest problem in biology. While Bates himself searched for natural affinities and focused attention on the important problems of the geographical distribution of animals, his general observation about systematists may also have applied to him, as his friend D. Sharp observed. Nevertheless, his erudite papers formed the substance for those who were able to develop theories, while his paper on mimicry and his Travels stand as classics in their own right.
(One of the most impressive of all Victorian scientists bu...)
1864Bates’s Unitarian religious views did not hinder his acceptance of natural selection.
Quotations:
"I suffered most inconvenience from the difficulty of getting news from the civilised world down river, from the irregularity of receipt of letters, parcels of books and periodicals, and towards the latter part of my residence from ill health arising from bad and insufficient food."
"I was obliged, at last, to come to the conclusion that the contemplation of nature alone is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind."
"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."
"It was with deep interest that my companion and myself, both now about to see and examine the beauties of a tropical country for the first time, gazed on the land where I, at least, eventually spent eleven of the best years of my life."
"Their elegant shape, showy colors, and slow, sailing mode of flight, make them very attractive objects, and their numbers are so great that they form quite a feature in the physiognomy of the forest, compensating for the scarcity of flowers."
"Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no fatal accident happened during the whole time of my residence."
"The people were simpler, more peaceable and friendly in their manners and dispositions; and assassinations, which give the southern provinces so ill a reputation, were almost unknown."
In 1861 Bates was elected a member to the Entomological Society of London and served as president in 1868, 1869, and 1878. He was elected fellow of the Linnean Society in 1871, a fellow of the Zoological Society in 1863, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1881.
Throughout his life, Bates read very widely and was particularly fond of reading Homer in the original and Gibbon’s monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Music also engaged some of his tune: he sang in the local glee dub, played the guitar, and maintained a strong interest in classical music throughout his life.
In 1863 Henry Bates married Sara Ann Mason of Leicester, who bore him one daughter and three sons, two of whom emigrated to New Zealand.