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OBITUARY. 



LlEUT.-COLONEL C. T. BiNGHAM. 



To his many friends in India and Burmah, as to all interested in 

 Indian Zoology, the news of the death of Lieut.-Colonel Charles 

 Thomas Bingham, late Bengal Staff Corps and Conservator of Forests, 

 Burmah, will have come as a shock. Colonel Bingham was widely 

 known as a keen naturalist, who, dm'ing his long service in Burmah, 

 devoted himself to the study of Natural History, and who was 

 surpassed by none in his devotion to science and in his constant 

 endeavour to add to the sum of knowledge in his branch. Though his 

 work was not crowned with academic honours or the fellowship of 

 learned societies, it will rank with that of Wood-Mason and de 

 Niceville, and to no one has it been possible to so signally advance 

 the study of the subject to which he devoted himself. Large collec- 

 tions of his making were sent home and formed the basis of much of 

 the Fauna of India volumes; he was a keen obsei-ver and added much 

 to our knowledge of the ways and habits of the bees and wasps, a 

 group to which he especially devoted himself. His earliest papers 

 related to birds and were published in Strai/ Feathers from 1876 

 to. 1881. His attention was then directed mainly to insects and he 

 achieved the rare distinction of combining the rigid accuracy of the 

 systematist with the breadth of view and power of observatien neces- 

 sary to study the living insect in its many activities and varied habits. 

 The Aculeate Hymenoptera of India and Burmah were his special 

 study, and the two volumes of the Fauna of India, dealing with them, 

 were his work. On his retirement he settled in London, and devoted 

 all his time to this work : he succeeded Dr. Blanford as Editor of the 

 Fauna of India in ]905, and workers in Indian Entomology will owe 

 a great debt to his untiring efforts to secure the co-operation of 

 authorities in Zoology and to give help of every possible kind to 

 workers in India. Colonel Bingham took up the work of producing 

 the volumes on the Butterflies for the Fauna of India, rendered 

 necessary by the death of Mr. Lionel de Nic^ville ; so great an under- 

 taking achieved bears witness to his devotion to Science, two volumes, 

 dealing with the Nymphalids, Papilionids, Pierids and part of the 



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