The Butterfly Hunter The Life of Henry Walter Bates

About this book

This is the epic, true story of the young explorer who put 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 at the time new to science. He went on to become the administrator for the Royal Geographical Society and transformed it to one which combined exploration with academic research and was responsible for placing geography on the school curriculum.

This long overdue book, now filmed as Amazon Adventure, reassesses Bates's life and work and finally places both the man and his work in their rightful place alongside the other greats.

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Biography

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 administrator for the Rothschild family at Waddesdon Manor. Leaving there in 1996, he became a lecturer at 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 Linnaean Society.