The Butterfly Hunter: The Life of Henry Walter Bates - Hardcover

Crawforth, Dr Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0956071619 ISBN 13: 9780956071613

Publisher: University of Buckingham Press, 2009

Synopsis

This is the epic, true and long overdue story of the young explorer who put forward the first ever case for the creation of a new species, providing what Charles Darwin called the "beautiful proof" for Natural Selection.

The major discovery of Batesian Mimicry was developed from Bates's fascinating 11-year journey and study of butterflies in the Amazon rainforest. He noted how certain animals adopt the look of others to deceive predators and gain an advantage to survive.

Little known to the public, Bates made other crucial contributions to biology: he collected over 14,000 specimens, of which over 8,000 were new to science at the time. He went on to become the administrator for the Royal Geographical Society and transformed it into an institution which combined exploration with academic research, and was responsible for placing geography on the school curriculum.

This important book reassesses Bates's life and finally places both the man and his work in their rightful place alongside the other greats.

About this title

Review

I recommend Butterfly Hunter, not just to Lepidopterists, but to anyone interested in natural history and the history of science....his writing is personal, vivid and entertaining. I particularly enjoyed reading Crawforth s introductory material describing converging life stories of Wallace, Bates, and others who contributed to Darwin s synthesis in On the Origin of Species. Bates met Alfred Russel Wallace when both were college students in England. They shared an interest in natural history and were intrigued by the mystery of the origin of species. The two men hatched an idealistic scheme to travel to Brazil, to be funded by collecting specimens to be shipped back to England and sold to museums and private collectors. This new book by Anthony Crawforth helps put the Bates back into Batesian mimicry and will be a welcome resource to better understand the importance of Henry W. Bates work on mimicry in butterflies and his contributions to evolutionary theory. The author believes that Bates, in spite of his friendship and professional association with Wallace and Darwin, is relatively unknown and his contributions to evolutionary theory not fully appreciated outside a small circle of evolutionary biologists. This book is biography of a scientist whose discovery and elucidation of mimicry in Lepidoptera was historically important. Its strength is in its extensive biographical material and it isn t intended to be either a natural history of the Amazon region nor a popular science treatment of mimicry in Lepidoptera. --MICHAEL M. COLLINS, Research Associate, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

About the Author

Dr Anthony Crawforth was born in Coventry in 1934. Educated at King Henry VIII School, he joined the Army for his National Service in 1952 and left as a Colonel in 1979. He then went to City University where he gained his MA in Museum Management whilst taking up an appointment as an administrator for the Rothschild family at Waddesdon Manor. Leaving there in 1996, he became a lecturer on the University of Buckingham in their Arts and Heritage Management undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Fascinated by Henry Walter Bates since his childhood he studied for his PhD in Biography at Buckingham with Bates as his subject. Married with three children and six grandchildren he now lives in Buckinghamshire. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Buckingham Press
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0956071619
• ISBN 13: 9780956071613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320