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Vol. XLVIII. LONDON, JANUARY, 1916 No. 1 



PROFESSOR H. H. CROFT, D.C.L. 



A most interesting memoir of the first President of the Entomo- 

 logical Society of Ontario, by Mr. John King, K.C., has recently 

 been published by the Macmillan Company of Toronto.* Through 

 the kindness of the publishers we are enabled to present to our 

 readers an excellent portrait of one of the pioneers in Canadian 

 Entomology, who was largely instrumental in founding the Society. 



Henry Holmes Croft was born in London, England, in 1820; 

 his first schoolmasters were French and Spanish refugees from the 

 great Napoleonic wars, who strove to make a precarious living by 

 teaching boys in their city of refuge. From them he passed on to 

 Tav'istock House, where he received an excellent training and the 

 foundation of a sound education. During this period, while still 

 3 mere lad, he manifested a great taste for chemistry and carried 

 on experiments in a small closet under the kitchen stairway in his 

 father's house, much ta the annoyance and disgust of the members 

 of the family, who showed no appreciation of a science which seemed 

 to produce only alarming explosions and abominable smells. 



After leaving school he spent a year in the office of his father, 

 who was Deputy Paymaster-General in the Ordnance Department, 

 then situated in the Tower of London. With him and an elder 

 brother he walked to the Tower and back, eight miles each way, 

 morning and evening throughout the week, and by this means 

 acquired vigorous health and a robust constitution which con- 

 tinued through life. Office work was by no means congenial, and 

 the heart of the youth was in his little den under the stairs. By 

 the advice of Professor Faraday, whom his father consulted, he 

 was sent to study chemistry at the University of Berlin. He did 

 not, however, confine his attention to this subject, but took courses 

 of study in biology, physics, anatomy and physiology, geology 

 and kindred sciences, and became greath' interested in entomology. 



* McCaul: Croft: Forneri; Personalities of Early University Days. By 

 John King, M.A., K.C. The INIacniiUan Company, St. Martin's House, Bond 

 Street, Toronto. (Price $1.25j. 



