WCP3578

[1]¹

A. R. Wallace

Parkstone, Dorset.

March 8th.1892

Dear Mr. Keltie

I am afraid I cannot give you any thing special about Bates², as I really know less than scores of others as to his life work, though we went to the Amazon together. I have at the Editor’s earnest request written a short notice of him in "Nature³" last week, and I really have no more to say & no further information to give.

Beyond his special great paper on "Mimicry" — his work was mostly technical descriptive Entomology in [2] which I took little interest & of the special merits of which I am no judge. There is a very nice obituary notice of him in the last Entomologists Monthly Magazine⁴ by M’Lachlan⁵ who, as you will see, says that "for many years he met him almost daily" — & knows far more about him than I do. In fact there are many things in that note which I knew nothing of — his MSS[?] notes — his classification of the Carabidae⁶ — his wide literary work. Owing to my having lived in the [3] country for the last 25 years I very rarely met him, & therefore know very little of his life & work in London. On the Amazon too ^we were only together for the first 6 months or thereabouts, & after that only met once or twice.

It is therefore because I really don’t feel myself at all able ^competent to give any general summary of his scientific work — beyond what I have said in Nature, & were there I go, in some things, from hearsay, — that I am not able further to help you. I should think that [4] M’Lachlan (A.; Westview, Clarendon Road, Lewisham) — would either write you something more himself or would tell you who is the best able to give an estimate of all his natural-history work. But M’Lachlan himself as a good all-round Entomologist is, I should think, the right man.

Even as to personal reminiscences I could give anything, as my memory of the details of that long-ago time are but dim, and I do not think I have a single letter of Bates’.

Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace. [signature]