Book is in good condition clean bright contents gilt edges to boards 4 raised bands to spine good binding [feint crack to front board junction binding good] marbled feps marbled page ends, all around full page and in text illustrations. Withdrawn stamp on prize and small stamp on back of first free endpaper. Binding rubbed along extremities; upper joint starting, but firm. Otherwise a desirable copy of an important work.

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.
The first edition appears in 1863 of Bates's wildly popular account of the Amazon region, during which he identified several thousand new species of insects and animals. He published it at the urging of Darwin, who wrote a lengthy appreciation of the book in the Natural History Review (vol. iii, 1863), and who considered it to be the best work of its kind. "During the whole of his sojourn amid the Brazilian forests his speculations were approximating to the theory of natural selection, and upon the publication of the Origin of Species he became a staunch and thoroughgoing adherent of the Darwinian hypothesis" (DNB).
Bates's discoveries in Amazonia provided support to Darwin's theory of natural selection. "After returning to England, [Bates] read Darwin's Origin-and put forward his famous idea of mimicry: poorly-defended butterflies could evolve to look like brightly-coloured, protected species avoided by predators."
Wallace and Bates went on an expedition to the Amazon, to study the region's wildlife-collecting duplicate specimens for sale to defray their expenses-in the hope of contributing ideas to the debate about the origin of species. After rapid preparations at the British Museum and Kew Gardens, they sailed on 26 April 1848, and arrived in Belém (then known as Pará) on 28 May. Wallace returned to England in 1852, but Bates was to remain in Amazonia for eleven years, collecting around bases at Belém, Ega (1850-51 and 1855-9), and Santarém and Villa Nova (1851-5); along the Amazon; and on expeditions up the Tapajos (1852) and as far west as São Paulo on the Solimões in 1857.