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HENRY WALTER BATES (1825-1892)
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BATES, HENRY WALTER (1825-1892), English naturalist and explorer, was born at Leicester on the 8th of February 1825. His father, a manufacturing hosier, intended him for business, and for a time the son yielded to his wishes, escaping as often as he could into the neighbouring country to gratify his love of botany and entomology. In 1844 he met a congenial spirit in Alfred Russel Wallace, and the result was discussion and execution of' a plan to explore some then little-known region of the globe. The banks of the Amazons was the district chosen, and in April 1848 the two friends sailed in a trader for Path. They had little or no money, but hoped to meet their expenses by the sale of duplicate specimens. After two years Bates and Wallace agreed to collect independently, Wallace taking the Rio Negro and the upper waters of the Orinoco, while Bates continued his route up the great river for 1400 M. He remained in the country eleven years, during which time he collected no fewer than 8000 species the king's right to levy impositions was limited by the statute of 1370—1371, advanced a principle still more dangerous to constitutional liberty. The statute of the 45 Edward III. cap. 4," he said, " which hath been so much urged, that no new imposition shall be imposed upon wool-fells, wool or leather, but only the custom and subsidy granted to the king—this extends only to the king himself and shall not bind his successors, for it is a principal part of the crown of England, which the king cannot diminish." See State.. Trials (ed. 1779), xi. pp. 30-32; excerpts in G. W. Prothero,Statutes and Constitutional Documents (Clarendon Press, 1844); G. B. Adams and H. Morse Stephens, Select Documents of Eng. Const. Hist. (New York, 1901) ; cf. T. P. Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist. (London, 1905), p. 393. (W. A. P.)