6 2 [July 



OBITUARIES 



AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON FRANKS 

 Born 1826. Died May 21, 1897 



Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, K.C.B., D.C.L., F.B.S., Pres. S.A., 

 F.G.S., Trustee of the British Museum, late keeper of British and 

 Mediaeval Antiquities and of Ethnography at the British Museum, 

 was born at Geneva in 1826, and educated at Eton and Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, taking his M.A. degree in 1852. His taste for 

 the beautiful in works of art, and his appreciation of the niceties, 

 peculiarities, and fantasies of artists, whether the results were 

 produced with the inspiration of genius, or by handicraft and labour, 

 led him to collect largely in each department of artistic work, and 

 fortunately his ample means enabled him to do so. With munificent 

 liberality he gave many valuable collections to the National Museum 

 at Bloomsbury. It was thus that, not only theoretically, but practi- 

 cally and personally, he was acquainted with the extensive and many- 

 sided groups of antiquities and ethnographic exhibits under his 

 keepership. He was not a mere official custodian, but a cultured 

 connoisseur, and a high-class authority on all points connected with 

 the scientific and historical aspects of the materials or collections in 

 his charge. Necessarily his study of medieval things kept him in 

 touch witli those of prehistoric age in the British Collection which 

 was under his care ; and, indeed, of these there are many objects of 

 human workmanship dating from extremely early times. Con- 

 temporary with these were similar productions in European and 

 other countries. These are largely represented in the British Museum 

 by the " Christy Collection," which Sir Wollaston Franks augmented 

 by successive gifts of similar well-sorted examples from many localities. 

 Indeed, this notable department in the museum well deserves now 

 to be called the " Christy-Franks Collection." 



In March 1864, Mr Henry Christy invited a party of his friends, 

 interested as antiquaries and geologists, to examine some of the bone- 

 caves on the Vezere, Dordogne district, in the south of France, which, 

 with his friend Edouard Lartet, he had for some time been investi- 

 gating with great care, and at considerable expense. The party 

 comprised Mr W. J. Hamilton (President of the Geological Society), 

 Prof. Rupert Jones (Assistant Secretary of the Geological 

 Society), Capt. (since Sir) Douglas Galton, Mr (since Sir) John 

 Lubbock, Mr (since Sir) John Evans, and Mr (since Sir) A. W. 

 Franks.* Not only had the last-named already interested himself in 

 Henry Christy's researches in the ethnographic relationship of various 

 textile fabrics, which had led him to Mexico, and in that country to 

 the observation of stone implements ; but A. W. Franks heartily 

 joined Christy in the study of stone implements, and of those who 



* Quart. Joum. Gcol. S'oc, vol. xx., 1864, p. 444; and " Reliquiae Aquitanicae, " 

 Partxii., 1873, p. 161. 



