154 The Irish Naturalist. [June, 



on those of Frankland, and would allow nothing to interrupt his discourse, 

 a characteristic the boys were not slow to discover. Though classics were 

 not his strong point, he tried, in those days, to work out an improved 

 system of the Latin declensions, hut ultimately abandoned the attempt. 

 After a lapse of nearly twent}^ j-ears, he retained clear and pleasant 

 recollections of many of the bo3-s and their pranks. Leaving the school 

 Hurst returned to the study of science, taking high honours in biology 

 under Huxle}". He was a skilful dissector and thorough draftsman. 

 After studying for some time under the late Professor Milnes Marshall 

 he went abroad to continue his zoological studies. As he more than 

 once said, it was at Marshall's own request that he returned to become 

 his assistant at the Owens College, Manchester. During this time the 

 writer saw very little of him. One of his zoological friends says : — " For 

 eleven years he filled this office with conspicuous diligence and success, 

 and not onh' earned the grateful recollection of several generations of 

 students of the College, but also laid under obligation a much wider 

 circle of zoologists by his share in the production of the 'Text-book of 

 Practical Zoology ' which has made the names of Marshall and Hurst 

 familiar in everj-^ biological laboratory not onl}- in this country but in 

 the world." 



In 1889 he took the degree of Ph.D. in the ITniversity of Leipzig, his 

 thesis being on the life-history of the gnat. He published subsequently 

 several papers on the anatomy and sense organs of insects. In the 

 accidental death of his chief, Marshall, Hurst lost a good friend, and his 

 disappointment was great when, after carrying on the work of the 

 zoological department at Owens for the rest of the session, the vacant 

 Chair was given to another. The promotion of Mr. Duerden to the 

 Curatorship of the Institute of Jamaica created a vacancy in the biological 

 staff in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, and consequent on certain 

 much needed re-arrangement of the work, Prof. Haddon offered Hurst 

 the demonstratorship of zoolog}- with which an additional inducement, 

 in the form of a zoologj- lectureship at the Ringsend Fishery School, 

 was associated. Hurst expected in Dublin opportunity for research 

 which his Manchester post had not sufficiently given ; but, on his 

 arrival, he devoted any spare time he had to a careful systematic 

 arranging and labelling of specimens and microscopic and lantern slides, 

 a laborious piece of perfectly voluntary work for which his only return 

 could be the appreciation of his chief. He took very little part in field 

 zoology, his memory, he used to say, not being suited to systematic 

 work, but he was keenly interested in the discussion of zoological 

 problems. With that sturdiness of character so marked in the people of 

 the North of P^ngland he had, to a certain extent, the less amiable 

 quality of outspokenness of opinion which is apt to offend the more 

 sensitive southerner. Yet no one would give himself more trouble than 

 he did to help a student, — time, knowledge, books, specimens were 

 freely placed at anyone's disposal. His recent articles in N'atiiral Sa'eine 

 in which he began a " systematic criticism of biological theory " included 

 such subjects as ** The Nature of Heredity," *' Evolution and Heredity," 

 " The Recapitulation Theory " (a favourite subject with Milnes Marshall). 



