Henry Walter Bates was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace, starting in 1848. Wallace returned in 1852, but lost his collection on the return voyage when his ship caught fire. When Bates arrived home in 1859 after a full eleven years, he had sent back over 14,712 species of which 8,000 were new to science. Bates wrote up his findings in his best-known work, The Naturalist on the River Amazons.
Henry Walter Bates
Plate from Bates' 1862 paper "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon Valley: Heliconiidae"
Bates' grave in East Finchley Cemetery
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is called a naturalist or natural historian.
Black and white tables of natural history, from Ephraim Chambers's 1728 Cyclopaedia.
A natural history collection in a French public secondary school
Blackberry from the sixth-century Vienna Dioscurides manuscript
Georges Buffon is best remembered for his Histoire naturelle, a 44-volume encyclopedia describing quadrupeds, birds, minerals, and some science and technology. Reptiles and fish were covered in supplements by Bernard Germain de Lacépède.