*84 OBITUARY. 



feel that his pursuits of Natural History had, perhaps, contributed largely to the 

 complacency and the elasticity of his almost patriarchal age. 



William Elford Leach, M.D., F.R.S. — Few men, says Dr. Boot, have 

 ever devoted themselves to Zoology with greater zeal than Dr. Leach, or attained 

 at an early period of life a higher reputation, at home and abroad, as a profound 

 naturalist. He was one of the most laborious and successful, as well as one of 

 the most universal, cultivators of Zoology which this country has ever produced. 

 His discoveries in the different classes of the Vertebrata, especially birds, were 

 extensive ; but it was in Entomology and Malacology that his labours have been 

 most known, and his improvements of the greatest importance. His know- 

 ledge of the Crustacea was superior to that of any other naturalist of his time, 

 and his arrangement the best, until the work of Dr. Milne Edwards appeared, 

 two years ago. After a long suspension of his studies from ill-health, during 

 which, and up to the period of his death, he was attended by the most devoted 

 of sisters, he returned to his favourite occupation with his habitual ardour ; and 

 the letters he wrote to his scientific friends in this country exhibited the sama 

 devotion to the study of Nature which distinguished the brighter years of his 

 life. His principal work, The Natural History of the Mollusca of Great 

 Britain, in the possession of his friend, Mr. Bell, is not yet published. 

 His other works were : Malacostraca Podophthalma Britannia?, 4to., 1815 and 

 1816, not finished; Zoological Miscellany, 3 vols. 8vo., 1817; On the Genera 

 and Species of Proboscideous Insects, 8vo., 1817- He described the animalg 

 taken by Cranch in the expedition of Capt. Tuckey to the Congo ; and was tha 

 author of valuable articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh Encyclo- 

 paedia, Philosophical Transactions, Zoological Journal, Memoirs of the Wernerian 

 Society, Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles. Between 1810 and 1820 he 

 contributed seven papers to the Transactions of the Linnean Society : three on 

 insects ; a general arrangement of the Crustacea, Myriapoda, and Arachnides, 

 a very laborious work; two descriptive of ten new genera of Bats; one on 

 three new species of Glareola. He died in Italy, last year, of cholera. 



Dr. B. continues : — Adam Afzaleus, Professor of Botany at Upsal, was, I 

 believe, the last of the pupils of Linn-eus, and distinguished, like all the pupils of 

 that great man, for his exact botanical knowledge. He contributed two papers to 

 the Transactions of the Linncean Society : " On the Botanical History of Trifo- 

 lium alpestre, T. medium, and T. pratense," in 1798. He resided in Sierra 

 Leone for several years, and published his principal work, Genera Plantarunt 

 Guineensium, in 1804 ; and several dissertations on the medicinal plants of that 

 country, besides some other works. 



