From H. W. Bates   11 January 1862

King St Leicester

11 Jany 1862

My Dear Sir

It grieves me very much to hear of your illness.1 I beg of you to throw my M.S. aside & not give a moment’s thought to the subject until you are perfectly restored.2

I go to town on Monday to spend a few days—to study at the B.M. and also to attend the Linn. Soc. meeting, where I shall exhibit the box of mimetic butterflies.3 I have arranged these in such a manner that any Naturalist may understand them

Yours sincerely | H W Bates

If you should wish to say anything whilst I am in town—a note will find me addressed to

John O’Groats hotel

Rupert Street

Haymarket

1
No letter containing this information has been found. Emma Darwin recorded in her diary (DAR 242) on 4 January 1862 that CD was ‘ill with influ[enza]’.
2
The reference is to the manuscript of the second chapter of Bates 1863 (see letter from H. W. Bates, 6 January 1862).
3
Bates’s collection of mimetic butterflies from the Amazon was exhibited at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London on 16 January 1862 (Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society 6 (1862): lviii).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3381,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3381