Ɛpsilon

From H. W. Bates   11 January 1877

40. Bartholomew Road. | London. N.W.

Jan 11 1877

My dear Mr Darwin

Enclosed is the Extract about the snake-like caterpillar, which is not repeated in the “Nat. on Amazons.”1

On enquiry I find that the Rev. Mr Hellins, gaol chaplain Exeter, is the possesor of only a portion of the magnificent collection of drawings of British caterpillars in all stages.2 They were drawn by a Mr Buckler, an Exciseman, who holds the larger portion.3 Buckler is a rabid anti-Darwinian & they say would not lend his drawings for any Darwinian purpose, but the Reverend is far more liberal & will very likely lend them if wanted.

Hoping you continue well, notwithstanding the sudden lowering of the temperature | Yours sincerely | H W Bates

1
The extract has not been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL. Bates had sent CD a drawing of a conspicuous caterpillar in April 1868 (Correspondence vol. 16, letter from H. W. Bates, 20 April 1868); CD included a description of it in Descent 1: 416. Bates had not described a snake-like caterpillar in his book The naturalist on the river Amazons (Bates 1863), but the caterpillar he saw was mentioned in a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace (see Correspondence vol. 18, letter from A. R. Wallace, 6 July 1870). Grant Allen later commented that, when in the Amazon, Bates had once been frightened by the snake-like caterpillar of an elephant hawk-moth ([G. Allen] 1887, p. 149). The elephant hawk-moth (Deilephila elpenor) is not found in Brazil, but there are over a hundred Brazilian hawk-moth species, some of which have snake-like caterpillars, such as Hemeroplanes ornatus, which will even strike harmlessly in snake-like fashion (see Lillywhite 2014, p. 132).
2
John Hellins had assisted CD by providing him with records of the proportion of sexes of larvae of Lepidoptera that he had bred (see Correspondence vol. 16, letters from John Hellins, 20 April 1868 and 16 December 1868). CD included the information in Descent 1: 313.
3
William Buckler was, in fact, a portrait artist, but he had started a project to describe the larvae of British moths and butterflies in 1858. Hellins did all the fieldwork for the project, because Buckler’s eyesight was too poor to find larvae (Salmon 2000, pp. 158–9). His nine-volume work, The larvae of the British butterflies and moths (Buckler 1886–1901) was published after his death.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10780,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10780