Ixiv PKOCEEDINGS OF THE 



source, and brought together into a small compass for the benefit of 

 the student, adhering throughout to what Swainson has termed 

 " the inflexible law of priority," and thus giving to every author the 

 credit which was justly his due. In this respect he was always 

 most conscientiously anxious to show what had really been done by 

 each individual and to what extent science had been benefited by 

 him. A feelmg of oversensitiveness in this particular led him, 

 perhaps, to feel too impatient at criticisms whi(;h appeared to him 

 not suificiently to take into account the difiiculties attendant on such 

 a task, or to make in too authoritative a tone suggestions which had 

 been weU and thoroughly considered by him, and not adopted on 

 account of higher principles which they seemed to him to contra- 

 dict. Besides all these important publications on ornithology, and 

 many contributions to the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' 

 and to the ' Annals of IS^atural History,' he found time for a revision 

 of some of the genera into which the Linnean genus Papilio had 

 been subdivided, and for an elaborate account of all that had been 

 written on insects parasitical on other insects and on plants. His 

 life, in fact, was devoted to the earnest pursuit of science, to which 

 he was devotedly attached, and in the furtherance of which he may 

 be said to have laid it down ; for in the early part of the present 

 year his brain seemed to be completely worn out with his labours, 

 which he never remitted. Towards the end of April he was struck 

 down by a eomj)lete loss of cerebral power ; and after lying for nearly 

 a fortnight insensible, and apparently unconscious, he died on the Gth 

 of May, without ever recovering sensibility. He was elected a Fellow 

 of the Linnean Society in 1845, and of the Royal in 1866. 



His natural-history proclivities may be said to have been born 

 with him. His father, Samuel Frederick Gray, was a distinguished 

 writer on chemistry, pharmacology, and botany; and his elder 

 brother, John Edward Gray, is the Head of the Zoological 

 Department in the British Museum. In his oificial capacity 

 George Eobert Gray was remarkable for the courtesy and kindness 

 with which he treated the visitors to the Museum ; and most of 

 our leading zoologists, as well as numerous students of ornithology, 

 will bear willing testimony to the readiness with which he commu- 

 nicated his vast stores of information, and the soundness of his 

 advice on zoological subjects. In private he was equally liberal and 

 kind-hearted, and his many friends can testify to the generosity and 

 good feeling which characterized him. To them, as well as to the 

 world of science, his death will be a severe loss. 



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