Wallace wrote an obituary of Bates in "Nature". He describes Bates's 1861 paper on mimicry in Heliconiidae butterflies as "remarkable and epoch-making", with "a clear and intelligible explanation", briefly addressing its attackers as "persons who are more or less ignorant of the facts". He then praises Bates's contributions to entomology, before regretting, in remarkably bitter words for an official obituary, that the "confinement and constant strain" of "mere drudgery of office work" for the Royal Geographical Society had with "little doubt ... weakened his constitution and shortened a valuable life".