Content uploaded by George William Beccaloni
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by George William Beccaloni on Oct 29, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
Henry Walter Bates: guilty until proven innocent?
GEORGE BECCALONI
Curator of Orthopteroid Insects &
Director of the A. R. Wallace Correspondence Project,
Life Sciences Department,
The Natural History Museum,
South Kensington,
London SW7 5BD, UK
E-mail: g.beccaloni@nhm.ac.uk
Introduction
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" Carl Sagan, 1980
In a recent article in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled "A Delicate Adjustment:
Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and 'The Problem of the Origin of Species'" historian John
van Wyhe accuses Henry Walter Bates (1825 - 1892) of lying several times in private letters
and also very publically in the preface to his famous book The Naturalist on the River
Amazons about one of his and Alfred Russel Wallace's motives for undertaking their Amazon
expedition in 1848. In addition van Wyhe accuses Bates of forging a quotation from a letter
that Wallace sent to him in the late 1840s. van Wyhe suggests that Bates lied because he was
looking for a job at the time and that he hoped the 'reflected glory' of being associated with
Wallace (who was relatively famous at that time due to his co-publication of the theory of
natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1858) would get him noticed.
The allegedly forged quote
Let us first consider the supposedly forged quote, which was cited by Bates in the preface to
the first (1863) edition of his book. Here it is in context:
"In the autumn of 1847 Mr. A. R. Wallace, who has since acquired wide fame in connection
with the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, proposed to me a joint expedition to the river
Amazons, for the purpose of exploring the Natural History of its banks ; the plan being to
make for ourselves a collection of objects, dispose of the duplicates in London to pay
expenses, and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters, 'towards solving
the problem of the origin of species,' a subject on which we had conversed and corresponded
much together."
van Wyhe rightly points out that it is very improbable that Wallace would have used the
phrase "problem of the origin of species" in a letter written in the late 1840s, since this phrase
only came into use after it was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1860 (van Wyhe, 2014).
So what is going on?
In the year that Bates' died, his friend and biographer Edward Clodd published a quote from a
letter written by Wallace which had somewhat similar wording to the 'suspect' quote. It
appeared in a memoir of Bates published in a reprint of the first edition of Bates' book
(Clodd, 1892). The quote was taken from a letter dated 11 October 1847 that Wallace sent to
Bates and which is now held in the Wallace Family Archive at the Natural History Museum,
London (see http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/scientific-resources/collections/library-
collections/wallace-letters-online/348/348/T/details.html). Due to this being the only phrase
in any extant letter from Wallace to Bates that is similar to the quote in Bates' preface, van
Wyhe suggests that the 'forged' quote was derived from it. Curiously, Clodd also cited Bates'
'forged' quote in his memoir, no doubt thinking that the two quotes originated from different
letters. He also published both in his 1897 book Pioneers of Evolution From Thales to
Huxley.
So why did Bates write "towards solving the problem of the origin of species" rather than
"with a view to the theory of the origin of species" in his preface? The simplest explanation is
that he made an honest mistake - perhaps he wrote it from memory, accidentally using
Huxley's phrase which was no doubt well known to him.
Deliberately 'forging' the quote, as van Wyhe suggests, would seem a peculiar and pointless
thing to do, since the 'real' phrase "with a view to the theory of the origin of species" is not
substantially different from the supposedly 'forged' phrase "towards solving the problem of
the origin of species". If Bates had cited the 'real' quote instead it would not have
significantly altered what he was saying. Here is part of Bates' preface with the 'real' quote
from the 1847 letter in place of the supposedly 'forged' quote:
"...the plan being to make for ourselves a collection of objects, dispose of the duplicates in
London to pay expenses, and gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in one of his letters,
'with a view to the theory of the origin of species' a subject on which we had conversed and
corresponded much together."
In his 1905 autobiography My Life, Wallace, who had by then obtained the original
manuscript of his 1847 letter to Bates from Clodd, only included the 'real' quote, suggesting
that the quote published in Bates' preface is indeed erroneous and did not originate from
another letter. Wallace says:
"After referring to a day spent in the insect-room at the British Museum on my way home
[from a trip to Paris in 1847], and the overwhelming numbers of the beetles and butterflies I
was able to look over, I add: 'I begin to feel rather dissatisfied with a mere local collection;
little is to be learnt by it. I should like to take some one family to study thoroughly1,
principally with a view to the theory of the origin of species. By that means I am strongly of
opinion that some definite results might be arrived at.' And at the very end of the letter I say:
'There is a work published by the Ray Society I should much like to see, Oken's 'Elements of
Physiophilosophy.' There is a review of it in the Athenaeum. It contains some remarkable
views on my favourite subject—the variations, arrangements, distribution, etc., of species.'"
Did Bates lie about the "higher purpose" of his and Wallace's Amazon trip?
Bates returned to England from his 11 year expedition to Brazil in 1859 and van Wyhe
(2014) believes that during the next three or so years he lied (made false statements with a
deliberate intent to deceive) about the "higher purpose" of his and Wallace's Amazon
expedition on at least four occasions. These alleged fibs in chronological order are as follows:
1) In a letter to Charles Darwin: van Wyhe (2014) says "The earliest occasion I have found
when Bates claimed that the Amazon expedition had a higher purpose than collecting was in
a, now lost, letter to Darwin in 1860." In his reply dated 22 November 1860 Darwin remarked
"...I have heard of your zealous exertions in the cause of Natural History. But I did not know
that you had worked with high philosophical questions before your mind. I have an old belief
that a good observer really means a good theorist & I fully expect to find your observations
most valuable." (see http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-2993).
2) In a letter to botanist Joseph Hooker dated 19 March 1861: Bates remarked "I have
accumulated a vast amount of material during my eleven years' travels on the Amazons, and
during the whole time directed my attention to the modifications of species and kindred
subjects..." (Clodd, 1892).
3) In the preface to the first edition of Bates' 1863 book: the relevant passage of which has
already been quoted above. The book was published between 1 and 14 April 1863 (see
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-4022).
4) In a letter from Bates to an unidentified correspondent dated 16 April 1863: in this Bates
remarks "There is nothing very remarkable in persons going out to make collections in new
countries for sale; what (I venture to say) merits some attention about Mr Wallace, and in a very far
less degree of myself, is that his main object -- which he never lost sight of -- was the study
of the objects collected with a view to philosophical conclusions. For this end we have both
retained complete collections of certain large groups for private study." [words in superscript
are contemporary insertions] (see http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/scientific-
resources/collections/library-collections/wallace-letters-online/4258/4370/T/details.html)
So is there any evidence which proves that any of the above statements are indeed lies, or for
that matter that Bates ever lied about anything? The answer is no: van Wyhe (2014) did not
provide any evidence that any of these statements are lies and no other author ever appears to
have claimed that Bates lied about anything. Bates was in fact regarded very highly by
Hooker, Darwin and his other friends and colleagues judging from the comments in the
obituary of him published in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892
(Vol. 14, pp. 245-257). For example Joseph Hooker wrote "Darwin's appreciation of him was
whole-hearted and all-round, and Bates' first visit to Down was marked with a white stone in
his host's memory, as in mine, and often recurred to by us."
Unable to prove that any of Bates' statements are lies, van Wyhe attempts to cast doubt on
Bates' honesty by arguing that he "exaggerated" the number of new species he collected in
the Amazon in the preface to his 1863 book. van Wyhe states that "Bates certainly did
exaggerate from 324 to 'no less than 8000'" and he concludes "Just as Bates exaggerated the
number of new species identified in his collections, he apparently also exaggerated the aim
and purpose of his (and Wallace’s) expedition." However, van Wyhe does not appear to have
considered the possibility that Bates' figure was based on extrapolation rather than merely
being an exaggeration. Bates believed that he had collected a total of 14,712 species and at
the time of writing his preface he knew that taxonomists in the British Museum had studied
477 of these and had determined that 324 of them were new to science. Knowing as Bates
did, that 68% of the species in the subsample of his collection which had been studied were
new, he probably simply calculated that his collection of 14,712 species should therefore
contain some 10,004 new species. That he actually claimed that 'only' 8,000 were new shows
that he was being conservative in his estimation, rather than 'exaggerating'. Bates should,
however, have probably qualified his statement that "...8000 of the species here enumerated
were new to science..." (Bates, 1863) and said something like "...8000 of the species here
enumerated are probably new to science..."
Even though there is no evidence that Bates' lied about the "higher purpose" of the trip and he
should therefore not be accused of having done so, that doesn't necessarily mean that he did
not lie. There are, however, a number of reasons which suggest that he was indeed telling the
truth.
The first is: why someone who was as intelligent and concerned about their reputation as
Bates appears to have been, would lie about something as significant as another person's
motives for doing something and then publish this untruth in a public forum? It would surely
have been risky enough lying in private letters to prominent figures such as Darwin and
Hooker, but to lie about another person's motives in a text that this person was bound to soon
read seems like professional suicide. Surely Bates would have realised that there was a
significant risk that Wallace would contradict his account in public or to influential peers in
private, and that this might result in serious damage to Bates' reputation? This must have
been the last thing that Bates would have wanted, especially as he was looking for
employment at the time.
So how did Wallace react to reading Bates book? We are fortunate that the letter Wallace
wrote to Bates after reading the first 1863 edition of the book survives (see
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/scientific-resources/collections/library-
collections/wallace-letters-online/4125/4142/T/details.html). Wallace was clearly impressed
and delighted with the book and concludes his letter by saying “Thanks for the kind manner
in which you have mentioned my name.” Since the only time that Wallace's name was
mentioned by Bates in anything other than a brief and factual way was in the passage from
the preface cited above, it is very likely that it was this particular mention that Wallace was
referring to. Wallace therefore endorsed what Bates said about him, rather than complaining
that what Bates said was inaccurate.
As van Wyhe (2014) points out, Bates' statement about the "higher purpose" of his and
Wallace's trip in the preface of his book was immediately highlighted by reviewers and many
others who discussed the expedition in a myriad of publications. van Wyhe (2014) says
"…the passage with the Wallace quotation is not like other passages in the book. It was the
dramatic mission statement for the voyage. It had already become, as it still is over a century
later, the most frequently quoted line from the entire book." Wallace therefore must have
come across dozens, if not hundreds, of instances of this "mission statement", yet he never
once (as far as we know) suggested that it was incorrect. He had ample opportunity to
comment on it: for example he reviewed books in which it received prominent mention,
including the 1868 edition of Lyell's famous work Principles of Geology (on page 276)
(see http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S146.htm). Interestingly, it even appears in
the introduction (by G. T. Bettany) to Ward, Lock & Co.'s 1889 edition of Wallace's own
book A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. Bettany states that Wallace "…
proposed to Mr. Bates a joint expedition to the Amazons, one of the objects, in addition to the
collection of natural history specimens, being to gather facts, as Mr. Wallace expressed it in
one of his letters to Mr. Bates, 'towards solving the problem of the origin of species,' a subject
on which they had already conversed and corresponded extensively." This statement
remained unchanged in further printings of this work. We know that Wallace provided
Bettany with information for his introduction (see http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-
curation/scientific-resources/collections/library-collections/wallace-letters-
online/4415/4686/T/details.html), so why if he knew that Bates' statement was incorrect did
he not ask for it to be removed?
Did Wallace say that his Amazon trip had a "higher purpose"?
So why, van Wyhe (2014) asks, did Wallace never explicitly state that one of his reasons for
going to the Amazon was to investigate transmutation (as evolution was then called)? A
simple explanation is that perhaps he never thought he needed to spell this out since the
"mission statement" derived from Bates' preface was very widely known.
What Wallace did explain in print was that he became deeply interested in the subject of
species transmutation after reading the book Vestiges of Creation (Chambers, 1844) in 1845
and that he had pondered this topic whilst in the Amazon. He evidences the first fact using
letters to Bates written between 1845 and 1847, including the one discussed earlier. In his
1905 autobiography My Life he says that these letters demonstrate "...that at this early period,
only about four years after I had begun to take any interest in natural history, I was already
speculating upon the origin of species, and taking note of everything bearing upon it that
came in my way." He goes on to say "These extracts from my early letters to Bates suffice to
show that the great problem of the origin of species was already distinctly formulated in my
mind; that I was not satisfied with the more or less vague solutions at that time offered; that I
believed the conception of evolution through natural law so clearly formulated in the
'Vestiges' to be, so far as it went, a true one; and that I firmly believed that a full and careful
study of the facts of nature would ultimately lead to a solution of the mystery."
The earliest indication that Wallace gives that he was pondering species transmutation whilst
in the Amazon is the following mention in his 1855 'Sarawak Law' paper2. He says: “The
great increase of our knowledge within the last twenty years, both of the present and past
history of the organic world, has accumulated a body of facts which should afford a sufficient
foundation for a comprehensive law embracing and explaining them all, and giving a
direction to new researches. It is about ten years [i.e. 1845] since the idea of such a law
suggested itself to the writer of this paper, and he has since taken every opportunity of testing
it by all the newly ascertained facts with which he has become acquainted, or has been able to
observe himself.”
In a 1903 article (http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S599.htm) Wallace explains
the history of his interest in transmutation particularly succinctly and clearly. He writes "Ever
since I had read the Vestiges of Creation before going to the Amazon, I continued at frequent
intervals to ponder on the great secret of the actual steps by which each new species had been
produced, with all its special adaptations to the conditions of its existence. My paper of 1855
[the 'Sarawak Law'] had merely shown that each new species was in some way dependent on
the circumstance that there had been always, in the very same locality, a closely allied
species, of which the new species seemed to be a modification. I myself firmly believed that
it was a direct modification of the pre-existing species through the ordinary process of
generation, as had been argued in the Vestiges of Creation; but as I could not yet see any
mode or process by which the change could be effected, and the characters of the new species
fixed and rendered permanent by natural law, I left it to be inferred till such a law should be
discovered. But less than three years later the long-sought law [natural selection] suddenly
dawned upon me, and, strange to say, was suggested to me by the very same work which had
suggested the same law to Mr. Darwin sixteen years earlier [i.e. Thomas Malthus' An Essay
on the Principle of Population]."
Conclusion
The evidence presented and evaluated above leaves little doubt that Wallace hoped to
investigate transmutation during his Amazon expedition (1848 - 1852) as both Bates and
Wallace stated. Curiously, van Wyhe (2014) remarked several times that the only evidence
for the claim that the Amazon trip had a "higher purpose" is the 'forged' quotation published
in Bates' preface3, but this is clearly incorrect as has been shown.
Even though Wallace was endeavouring to investigate transmutation whilst in the Amazon, it
was in the Malay Archipelago in 1858 that he finally discovered what is believed to be the
primary mechanism driving the evolution of life on Earth: natural selection. This idea was, of
course, published jointly with Charles Darwin in August of that year (for more information
see Beccaloni, 2013). The only indication Wallace gave in print during the early 1850's that
he had been investigating transmutation in the Amazon was in a paper read at a meeting of
the Entomological Society of London in 1853 and published in 1854. In this article Wallace
remarked "All these groups [of butterflies] are exceedingly productive in closely allied
species and varieties of the most interesting description, and often having a very limited
range; and as there is every reason to believe that the banks of the lower Amazon are among
the most recently formed parts of South America, we may fairly regard those insects, which
are peculiar to that district, as among the youngest of species, the latest in the long series of
modifications which the forms of animal life have undergone." There is little doubt that he is
referring to transmutation here, especially considering what we know about his interest in the
subject. His conclusion to this paper highlights the massive setback his research suffered due
to the sinking of his ship on the way back from the Amazon:
"…I venture to hope that if my observations are wanting in detail and in precision as to the
exact species to which they apply, it may be imputed, not to want of accuracy on my part, but
to the loss of a large portion of my notes and collections during my return voyage to this
country. I trust, however, that in the absence of much information on the habits of exotic
insects, my remarks, however imperfect, may not be altogether valueless."
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Ahren Lester, Charles Smith, Jim Costa, Andrew Berry, Ted Benton, Peter
Raby and John van Wyhe for discussing the issues in this article with me.
Endnotes
1. Referring to this statement in Wallace's letter van Wyhe (2014) says "Wallace asked about
collecting a family of insects for study in England. [original emphasis]" and he goes on to say
"Whatever it was, it could be studied by collecting only a single insect 'family of moderate
extent' in England. Could this really refer to an intention to discover how all new species on
earth appear?" Why van Wyhe assumes that Wallace meant only those species of an insect
family which occur in England is unclear and he is almost certainly incorrect. Certainly
Wallace does not state that he means only the species of a family in England, France, the
Amazon, or wherever. It is much more parsimonious and plausible to take Wallace's
statement at face value - that he simply meant the species of an entire family of insects (e.g.
Papilionidae (swallowtail butterflies), Cetoniidae (flower chafer beetles) etc.), not just those
species found in a limited region such as England. Note that the Papilionidae and Cetoniidae
are two of the insect families that Wallace was most interested in, at least whilst he was in the
Malay Archipelago, and that in the UK these families contain only 1 and 5 species
respectively.
2. Note that in My Life (1905) Wallace says of his 1855 paper: "My paper written at Sarawak
rendered it certain to my mind that the change had taken place by natural succession and
descent—one species becoming changed either slowly or rapidly into another."
3. van Wyhe (2014) states:
"For over a century it has been believed that Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter
Bates set out for the Amazon in 1848 with the aim of 'solving the problem of the
origin of species'. Yet this enticing story is based on only one sentence [my emphasis].
Bates claimed in the preface to his 1863 book that Wallace stated this was the aim of
their expedition in an 1847 letter."
"…when in fact Bates’ letter [the letter to Bates] is the only source of this
information."
"…no other contemporary evidence suggests that their trip to the Amazon was meant
to solve how species evolved or even to study evolution of any kind."
"And this quotation is our only [original emphasis] source for a very specific if
irresistibly appealing version of events."
References
Bates, H. W. 1863. The naturalist on the River Amazons: A record of adventures,
habits of animals, sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life and aspects of nature under the
equator during eleven years of travel. London: John Murray.
Beccaloni, G. W. 2013. Alfred Russel Wallace and Natural Selection: the Real Story.
[http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/junglehero/alfred-wallace-biography.pdf]
Chambers, R. 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.
Clodd, E. 1892. Memoir [of Henry Walter Bates] In: Bates, H. E. The naturalist on the River
Amazons. A record of adventures, habits of animals, sketches of Brazilian and Indian life,
and aspects of nature under the Equator, during eleven years of travel. With a memoir of the
author, by Edward Clodd. London: John Murray, pp. xvii–lxxxix. [see
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/13535#/summary]
Clodd, E. 1897. Pioneers of evolution from Thales to Huxley: With an intermediate chapter
on the causes of arrest of the movement. New York: Appleton & Co.
Lyell, C. 1868. Principles of geology or the modern changes of the Earth and its inhabitants
considered as illustrative of geology. 10th edition, 3 volumes. London: John Murray.
Malthus, T. R. 1826. An essay on the principle of population; or, a view of its past and
present effects on human happiness; with an inquiry into our prospects respecting the future
removal or mitigation of the evils which it occasions. 6th edition, 2 volumes. London: John
Murray.
Wallace, A. R. 1854. On the habits of the butterflies of the Amazon valley [a paper read at
the ESL meetings of 7 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1853]. Transactions of the Entomological Society of
London 2(8): 253-264.
Wallace, A. R. 1889. A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an account of
the native tribes, and observations on the climate, geology, and natural history of the Amazon
valley. Second Edition. Minerva Library of Famous Books, Vol. 8. London, New York, &
Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co.
Wallace, A. R. 1903. The dawn of a great discovery (my relations with Darwin in reference
to the theory of natural selection). Black and White 25: 78-79.
Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman & Hall.
van Wyhe, J. 2014. A delicate adjustment: Wallace and Bates on the Amazon and "the
problem of the origin of species". Journal of the History of Biology [see a preview here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10739-014-9378-z]
Citation
Please cite this article as: Beccaloni, G. 2014. Henry Walter Bates: guilty until proven
innocent? Version 1.1 (April 2014) <http://wallacefund.info/henry-walter-bates-guilty-until-
proven-innocent>
