September, 1902. t97 



NATURALISTS OF IRELAND. 



L— ALEXANDER HENRY HAUDAY. 

 BY PROFESSOR K- PERCEVAL WRIGHT, M.D. 



Alexander Henry Haliday was the eldest child of William 

 Halida}^ and Marian Webster. He was born on the 21st 

 November, 1806, at Clifden, County of Down. He entered 

 Trinity College, Dublin, in his sixteenth j^ear, and obtained 

 the gold medal in classics at his degree examination in 

 1827. Shortly afterwards he was called to the Irish Bar, 

 joining the north-east circuit, but he very soon retired from 

 practice. From his early college days he was a student of 

 nature, endowed with a very retentive memory, marked 

 delicacy of touch, and he was an excellent linguist; research, 

 however difficult, was but a delight. Before he left college he 

 had sent his first paper (" Notices of Insects taken in the North 

 of Ireland") to the Zoological Journal, where it was published, 

 with a highly appreciative note by J. F. Stephens {loc cit.^ 

 vol. iii., p. 500). In 1833 he published in the Ento7nological 

 Magazbie, a '' Catalogue of the Diptera, occurring in the 

 neighbourhood of Holy wood, in the County of Down." He 

 also commenced the publication of an account of the 

 Ich7ieiimones rninuti of Linnaeus. These memoirs were written 

 in Latin, and not only by the novelty and interest of the 

 subject, but by the classic elegance of the style in which it was 

 treated, placed their author in the fore rank of entomologists. 

 " Nothing," writes J. O. Westwood, in a letter to the writer of 

 this brief notice, " has ever exceeded the clearness and pre- 

 cision of his general views, as well as his minute and elaborate 

 details." 



A nearly complete list of his writings down to 1862 will be 

 found in Dr. Hagen's Bibliothcca E7ito>nologica, but several 

 critical notices which appeared in the Naliual History Review^ 

 not being signed or initialled, do not appear in the list. The 

 opportunity is taken of mentioning that Loew's notice 

 of the Insecta B}it. Diptera, which was published in the 

 Naticral History Review, was translated by Haliday, who 

 omitted all references to himself that were in the manuscript. 



Professor Westwood thought that Haliday's monograph of the 



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