f)92 president's address. 



Among the sources of our interest in W. S. Macleay. the following; may be 

 particularised. In due time he succeeded to the collection of liis father, added 

 considerably to it, and eventually passed on the joint collections to William Mac- 

 leay. He had worked up the Scarabaeiilae in his father's collection ; also Captain 

 P. P. King's collection of Australian Annulosa. The results of his work and 

 of his influence are contributions to a not unimportant, Pre-Dar\vinian, English 

 chapter in the history of Zoology. He was universally recognised as the leading 

 representative of Zoology resident in Sydney from 1839 up to the time of his 

 death in 1865. But a special source of interest is that he was the guide and 

 mentor of William Macleay; and a most potent influence in starting his coiisin 

 on the first stage of his career, as a working entomologist, preparatory to becom- 

 ing a member of the succession. And finally, we lia\e a very interesting series 

 of memorials of him. 



The two original sources of biograpliical information concerning W. S. 

 Macleay that we have are an obituary notice published in the Stidtie/i Moniivij 

 Herald of January .SOth, 1865; and the memorial sketch communicated by the 

 Senior Secretary, at the Anniversary Meeting of the Linnean Society of London, 

 on May 24th, 1865 [Journ., Zool., ix., Proc, p-c.]. Later notices in Biographical 

 Dictionaries are based on one or other of these. The first wa.s utilised by the 

 Rev. R. L. King in the preparation of his first Presidential Address to the Ento- 

 mological Society of New South Wales, on .January 30th, 1865 [Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 N.S. Wales, Vol. i., p. xliii.]. Mr. King adds: "The following memoir I have 

 taken principally from a notice which Las lately appeared from the. pen of an old 

 friend." This would be, almo.st certainly, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, probably 

 after a consultation with William Macleay. ISIr. Clarke was one of the oldest 

 and closest Australian scientific friends of W. S. Macleay. Their acquaintance 

 probably began at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science at Liverpool, in 1837, when both were thinking of migrating to Australia. 



The biographical sketch communicated to the Linnean Society, from internal 

 evidence, was apparently drawn up by Mr. Busk, Senior Secretary, after consul- 

 tation with George Macleay, possibly also with Professor Huxley. George Mac- 

 leay. at this time, was a Member of the Council, and would have received full 

 particulars of W. S. Jlacleay's decease from William Macleay. 



W. S. Macleay graduated with hououi's at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 

 1814. His University career seems to have been without direct influence on his 

 interest in Natural History, as might be expected from his own remarks on the 

 backward state of Zoology in England in his day. Of this, he says: "Well may 

 the foreigner who beholds our learned establishments so splendidly endowed, note, 

 among the most remarkable circumstances atten<ling them, that in none whatever 

 should there be a zoological chair. It is not for me to enter into the causes of this, 

 else it were desirable to know why plants should have been deemed worthy of 

 attention, while animals have been utterly neglected. . . . It is true that 

 there are profe.ssoi-s of Natural History in three of our Northern Universities. 

 But we must not conceal the fact that a professorship of Natural 

 History is necessarily charged with duties that give ample employment in Paris 

 to thirteen professoi-s with their numerous assistants. I have ventured to give 

 this humiliating picture of the state of zoological instruction in Great Britain, be- 

 cause there are persons who affect surprise, that in that science which relates to 

 the animated works of God. FrancP should taki' precedence over a nation incom- 

 parably more religious" [Hor. Ent. p. 457. footnote]. 



