May, 1922. The Irish Naturalist 40 



HENRY LYSTER JAMESON. 



The death of Dr. H. L. Jameson, at the comparatively 

 early age of forty-seven will be received with feelings of 

 deep regret among his many friends in Ireland. He died 

 suddenly at West Mersea, in Essex from haemorrhage of the 

 lungs after having been for some years a great sufferer 

 from asthma. 



Only son of the Rev. Paul Lyster Jameson, rector of 

 Killencoole, in the County Louth, Henry Lyster Jameson 

 developed an early taste for natural history. As a young 

 man of seventeen he contributed some notes on birds to 

 the pages of the first volume of the Irish Naturalist. Later 

 on he turned his attention more and more to insects. At 

 home he kept an aquarium, in which he observed various 

 forms of freshwater beetles and other creatures. He was a 

 keen observer, and full of enthusiasm for any new^ zoological 

 discovery. When a lighthouse-keeper at Carlingford shot 

 what turned out to be a Yellow-billed Sheath-bill — a South 

 American bird, it was young Jameson who sent the first full 

 description of it to this magazine in June, 1893. He now 

 became a student in Trinity College, Dublin, and wt saw 

 a great deal of him in the Museum. A subject w^hich 

 then fascinated him particularly was the study of the 

 habits and distribution of bats, which resulted in his 

 first article on " Irish Bats " in this magazine (April, 

 1894). In the following year he contributed a series 

 of papers on Irish bats, containing a list and dis- 

 tribution of all the species. When the well-known 

 French cave-explorer, E. A. Martel, wrote to me that he 

 wished to visit some of the more notable Irish caves, and 

 was anxious to secure a suitable companion, I recommended 

 Jameson. And so Martel's short but memorable visit to 

 Ireland was carried out in the company of one whom he 

 called " ce charmant jeune entomologiste." Martel's visit 

 gave the first impetus to cave researches, and his extremely 

 interesting article, with a map of Mitchelstown cave, in this 

 magazine will be remembered, together with Jameson's 

 notes on the animals he met with in this cave and the 



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