TJXXEAN SOCIETT OF LONDON. 4I 



Woodcraft and intimate joractical knowledge of wild creatures was 

 naturally acquired by all the brothers, and was shared by their only 

 sister, Afary, who (as Mrs. F. Barber) was afterwards distinguished 

 for her botanical and entomological discoveries. 



James Henry was one of the younger brothers, and he and his 

 sister were much together, and early gave proof of being excellent 

 natural-history observers. Both of them were correspondents of 

 the late Edgar Layard, the first Curator of the South-African 

 Museum in Cape Town, on ornithological subjects chiefly ; but all 

 living forms were of interest to them, and some insects collected by 

 Bowker in Kaffraria in 1862 were handed by Layard to the writer 

 of this notice, with the suggestion that correspondence on entomology 

 with an observer so keen and so favourably situated in the Kaffrarinn 

 forests might prove rich in results. Bowker was then an Inspector 

 in the Frontier Armed and Moimted Police, and his patrol duties in 

 the Trans-Xei territory tooJi him into parts of the country then 

 almost unvisited by Europeans. He entered enthusiastically on 

 insect-collecting, and by degrees found it necessary to restrict his 

 attention for the most part to Lepidoptera. His discoveries in this 

 Order were of great interest, and his notes on habits, &o. of lasting 

 value. After rising to be Commandant of the Mounted Police, he 

 was sent in 1870 to take charge of the newly-annexed territory of 

 Basutoland, and even in that bleak upland tract he succeeded in 

 discovering some new species of butterflies. In the early days of 

 the diamond discoveries he was appointed Chief Commissioner of 

 Griqualand West, bat found time to continue his researches for 

 other gems than those which absorbed the general attention there. 



On his retirement from the public service in 187S, he was given 

 the rank of retired Colonel. He had suffered gieatly from rheu- 

 matism, and found tbat he was nowhere so little troubled with it as 

 on the coast of Xatal ; and he therefore — tbe more readily because 

 of the remarkably rich insect-fauna of that district — settled down in 

 the neighbourhood of Durban, eventually building a house and 

 forming a garden at the village of Malvern. IS^ow that he was free 

 from all official ties and labours, he extended his collections to other 

 Orders and Classes of animals, including marine forms, and for a 

 long series of years he remained the largest and most constant donor 

 of specimens among the contributors to the South-African Museum. 

 In Xatal his precept gathered round him quite a school of ardent 

 3'ounger observers and collectors, and in all natural-history matters 

 he was consulted as an unfailing authority and referee. His death, 

 on 27th October, 1900, was a grievous less not only to friends and 

 relations, but also to all students of the fauna of Africa. 



The wi iters work, ' South-African Butterflies,' pnblishcd in 

 1887-89, owed its completeness at that time in a very large degree 

 to the material and notes contributed by Colonel Bowker during the 

 previous quarter of a century. This was gratefully acknowledged 

 on the title and in tbe preface, and indeed almost every other page 

 of the work contained some reference to his assistance. 



He was elected a Fellow of the Linneau Society on November 21, 

 1889. ' [R. T.] 



