Emily Cole: Outside Reading "In The Heart of the Amazon Forest"

Henry Walter Bates’ account of his adventures “In the Heart of the Amazon Forest,” the reader is able to learn firsthand of the environment and especially the species found by said author. This specific edition is published with three parts of Bates’ journals, “Blow-guns, Turtle Hunting and Alligators,” “Toucans, Vampire Bats, Foraging Ants and Other Creatures,” and “Departure.” In this first chapter, the author proclaims, “The whole of the country for hundreds of miles is covered with picturesque but pathless forests…” (p. 2) in which Bates discovers and studies hundreds of species of animals, mostly insects. Because of this, the book goes into a lot of weirdly descriptive insect behavior, something I’m really not interested in. But other than that, Bates’ writing is very easy to follow and interesting; its sort of like reading “Planet Earth,” and will really entertain as much as it informs one about the Amazon.