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.

Taking advantage of his diplomatic privilege in Japan to travel further and inquire deeper than other foreigners, Swiss envoy Aime Humbert (1819-1900) brought back stories of life under the Tokugawa shogunate in its final years. First published in the journal Le Tour du monde in 1866, his account of Japanese history and daily life was republished as Le Japon illustre in 1870. This 1874 English translation brought readers up to date by including additional chapters on the 1868 revolution and its aftermath. Humbert focused his narrative on the history and culture of four locations: Benten, the foreign settlement at Yokohama; Kyoto, where emperors had resided for centuries; Kamakura, the old centre of political power; and Yeddo, now Tokyo, the new capital of Japan. Featuring almost 200 illustrations taken from Humbert's collection of prints and photographs, this book captures descriptively and pictorially a country on the verge of dramatic political and social change.

This heavily illustrated book is an account of a German Arctic expedition, published in 1873 4 by its commander Karl Koldewey (1837 1908) and in this English translation in 1874. The states of northern Germany had a long tradition of trade and exploration in northern waters. As the German empire came into being, two major expeditions were launched, both commanded by Koldewey. The second, of 1869 70, consisted of two vessels, the Germania and the Hansa, a supply ship. The Hansa became separated in fog, failed to reach the fallback rendezvous, was icebound, and finally sank, while the crew survived for nine months on a diminishing ice floe until they reached the coast of Greenland in their surviving small boats. The Germania reached the north of Greenland before encountering pack ice, and was successful in surveying the coast and collecting botanical specimens, before returning safely in 1870."

First published in 1863, this is a first-hand account of Henry Walter Bates' eleven-year expedition to the river Amazon in 1848, during which he discovered some eight thousand species unknown to the natural sciences. Written in the first person, it records the astonishing range of natural life in the regions traversed by the Amazon and its tributaries. Describing his adventures south of the equator, Bates takes the reader through Para, Tocantins, Cameta, Marajo, Caripi, Obydos, Manos, Santarem, Tapajos, and Ega, descriptively cataloguing the rich vegetation, aboriginal population, and wondrous birds, animals and insects of these regions. More than just a scientist's log, the work that took Bates three years to complete was considered by Darwin to be 'the best work of natural history travels ever published in England.' This third edition of the book (1873) also contains numerous illustrations by the noted zoologist Joseph Wolf.