APPENDIX. 607 



thus showing that, to the latest period of his Hfe, the extension of his 

 favourite science was one of the objects nearest his heart. 



I will not encroach on the province of my friend Mr, Freeman, who is 

 so well able to do justice to it, by expatiating more largely on the admi- 

 rable traits which, in every point of view, distinguished the character of 

 my dear old friend ; but I will conclude this slight sketch of the history 

 of our long friendship, which for forty-five years formed one of the great 

 pleasures of our existence, — I know that I may truly say of his as of 

 mine, — by pointing out to our brother entomologists, whom I have had 

 chiefly in view in writing it, two circumstances in his study of insects by 

 which I was always forcibly struck on my visits to him at Barham. 



The first was the little parade of apparatus with which his extensive 

 and valuable acquisitions were made. If going to any distance, he would 

 put into his pocket a forceps-net and small water-net, with which to catcli 

 bees, flies, and aquatic insects ; but, in general, I do not remember to 

 have seen him use a net of any other description. His numerous cap- 

 tures of rare and new Coleoptera were mostly made by carefully search- 

 ing for them in their haunts, from which, — if trees, shrubs, or long grass, 

 &c., — he would beat them with his walking-stick into a newspaper ; and, 

 collected in this way, he would bring home in a few small phials in his 

 waistcoat pockets, and in a moderate-sized collecting-box, after an after- 

 noon's excursion, a booty often much richer than his companions had 

 secured with their more elaborate apparatus. 



The second circumstance in Mr. Kirby's study of insects to which I 

 allude was the deliberate and careful way in which he investigated the 

 nomenclature of his species. Every author likely to have described them 

 was consulted, their descriptions duly estimated ; and it was only after 

 thus coming to the decision that the insect before him had not been pre- 

 viously described that he placed it in his cabinet under a new name. It 

 was owing to this cautious mode of proceeding — which young entomolo- 

 gists would do well to follow — that he fell into so few errors, and 

 rendered such solid service to the science ; and a not less careful con- 

 sideration was always exercised by him in the forming of new genera and 

 in his published descriptions of new species; as his admirable papers in 

 the Linnean Transactions amply testify. 



The above remarks are meant for entomologists ; but there is another 

 moral to be derived from Mr. Kirby's life, to which, in concluding, I 

 would fain draw the attention of all who, like him, have some leisure 

 time to command, and reside in the country, — the great accession of 

 happiness which he derived from his entomological pursuits, which not 

 only supplied him with objects of interest for every walk, and for every 

 spare moment within doors, but introduced him to a large circle of esti- 

 mable naturalists at home and abroad, and thus virtually doubled the 

 pleasures of his existence ; and this without neglecting any one of his 

 professional or social duties, with which, much as he did for Entomology, 

 he never allowed his study of it to interfere. 



