LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. xlix 



together with seven of his children by his first wife, survives him. 

 He died on the 15th of August last, at his residence in Park Lane, 

 and was buried in the cemetery at Kensal Green. His eldest 

 son, the present Duke, has filled several important offices in the 

 State, and is a Trustee of the British Museum. 



William Swmnson, Esq., F.B.S., Hon. M.G.P.S. 8fc, was born 

 on the 8th of October 1789. His father was then Secretary of 

 the Board of Customs in London, and subsequently filled the im- 

 portant office of Collector of the Port of Liverpool. At the early 

 age of 14, he was appointed a Junior Clerk in the same branch of 

 the service ; but a love of natural history had been so strongly 

 implanted in him, when a mere child, by the inspection of his 

 father's collections of British insects and shells, that it became 

 impossible to reconcile his ardent disposition to the formal routine 

 of official life at home. To gratify his inclination for studying the 

 natural history of other countries, his father therefore obtained 

 for him an appointment in the Commissariat, and in this new 

 capacity, after a short stay at Malta, he arrived in Sicily in the 

 spring of 1807. During the eight succeeding years he was chiefly 

 stationed in that island, and no serious operations being under- 

 taken by the corps to which h© was attached, he had abundant 

 opportunities of adding to his collections of plants, insects, shells 

 and fishes, and leisure to make a multitude of drawings and 

 sketches of natural objects. During this period he made an ex- 

 cursion to Greece, and also visited Naples, Genoa and Tuscany. 

 In 1815 he returned to England, bringing with him large collec- 

 tions in natural history ; and resolving henceforward to devote 

 himself to no other pursuit, he relinquished the certain prospect 

 of rapid advancement in his profession, and retired upon half-pay. 

 His great object was to visit some distant part of the world which 

 had been little investigated by naturalists, and he first fixed upon 

 Southern Africa ; but on hearing of the successful journey of Dr. 

 Burchell in that region, which he supposed to have nearly ex- 

 hausted its natural productions, he determined on penetrating 

 into the interior of Northern Brazil. "With this view, in company 

 with Mr.'Koster, the narrative of whose first journey in Brazil 

 had just been published, he left England late in the autumn of 

 1816. But his attempts to traverse the Continent, or even to 

 penetrate far into the interior, were frustrated by the revolution 

 of 1817, and he was compelled to content himself with collecting 

 in the neighbourhood of Olinda, in the district of the Rio San 

 Erancisco, and afterwards in that of Rio de Janeiro. On his 



Linn. Peoc. d 



