A Naturalist in the Amazon

This charming book revolves around the two journals Bates' produced during his groundbreaking travels and discoveries during his stay in the Amazon, on which his classic, The Naturalist on the River Amazon, was based. It includes facsimile reproductions of stunning illustrated pages many of them taken from his two Amazon journals as well as an essay describing his travels. The journals reveal how a self-taught naturalist and butterfly enthusiast had a profound impact on the science of evolution. Bates, a trusted companion of Alfred Russel Wallace, travelled with him to the Amazon in 1848. There he became fascinated by close similarities in appearance between unrelated butterflies. He found that so-called tasty species - those that are sought after by predators - had evolved to look like toxic species - which predators avoid - to escape being attacked. This idea became known as Batesian mimicry. Bates spent a total of 11 years in the Amazon, a vast network of largely unexplored major rivers and their tributaries set in the world's largest area of tropical rain forest in South America. By the time he returned to England in 1859, still only 34 years old, Bates had collected, by his own estimate, some 712 species of mammals, reptiles, birds, fishes and molluscs, and about 14,000 species of insects, of which no less than 8,000 were previously unknown.