First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bates lived and studied in Amazonian South America for a total of eleven years, and is still regarded as one of the world's pioneering naturalists and entomologists. This classic two-volume work elucidates his concept of mimetic resemblance--known to this day as "Batesian mimicry"--and displays his significant contribution to the early development of the theory of natural selection.
This is a reprint of the Bates family copy, the exclusive property of the Natural History Museum, and includes a family tree of the Leicester branch of Bates family. The volumes are richly illustrated with numerous plates and a foldout map of Bates' journey along the Amazon.

This charming book revolves around the two journals Bates produced during his groundbreaking travels in the Amazon, and his classic work The Naturalist on the River Amazons. Alongside specially selected excerpts from his book are facsimile reproductions of the pages from his journals demonstrating his talents as an artist as well as a scientist. 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 to escape being attacked. This idea became known as Batesian mimicry. Bates spent a total of 11 years in the Amazon, exploring the vast network of largely unvisited 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.