My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

;CHAPTER XFOUR YEARS IN THE AMAZON VALLEYDuring my residence at Neath I kept up somecorrespondence with H. W. Bates, chiefly on insectcollecting. We exchanged specimens, and, I thinkin the summer of 1847, he came on a week's visit,which we spent chiefly in beetle-collecting and in discussingvarious matters, and it must have been atthis time that we talked over a proposed collectingjourney to the tropics, but had not then decided whereto go. Mr. Bates' widow having kindly returned tome such of my letters as he had preserved, I find inthem some references to the subjects in which I wasthen interested. I will, therefore, here give a fewextracts from them.I had recently read "Vestiges of the NaturalHistory of Creation," and was much impressed by it,and I gave my views concerning it in several of myletters to Bates. In one letter I wrote, " It furnishesa subject for every observer of nature to attend toevery fact he observes will make either for or againstit, and it thus serves both as an incitement to thecollection of facts, and an object to which they canbe applied when collected. Many eminent writerssupport the theory of the progressive development ofanimals and plants."And :— in another letter " I was much pleased to