LlTiKEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. 77 



In 1S83 he mavried Miss Henrietta Blanche Bull, daughter of 

 H. E. Boyes Bull, of Calcutta. 



In 1873 he became, in succession to E. L. Layard, Curator of 

 the South African Museum in Cape Town, a post he retained 

 until 1895, when, resigning on account of his healtli, he returned 

 to this country and lived here until his deatli at Epsom on 

 July 25, lUlO. In 1881 he was appointed sole Commissioner ta 

 the Phylloxera Congress at Bordeaux ; in 1886 a member of the 

 Commission for extirpating this pest from the Cape vineyards ; in 

 1892 a member of the Cape Fisheries Commission, 



He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1883, was 

 President of the South African Philosophical Society 1883-84, and 

 of the Entomological Society of London 1897-98. In 1899, during 

 his residence at Oxford, the degree of Hon. M.A. was conferred, 

 upon him. 



Roland Trimen's whole career was profoundly influenced by 

 his friendship with Charles Darwin, whom he first saw in the 

 Insect Room of the British Museum, towards the close of 

 1859, jusr after the appearance of 'The Origin of Species.' He 

 bad then no opportunity of speaking to the ilhistrious naturalist, 

 but he heard Adam White solemnly protesting " Ah Sir! if ye 

 had only stopped with the ' Voyage of the Beagle ' I " 



The 'Fertilisation of Orchids' was published in 1862, and 

 Trimen was at once stimulated to study the Cape species in the 

 light of Darwin's work, and to help the author in this and other 

 directions — help acknowledged in later issues of the 'Eertilisation' 

 (see 2nd ed., 6th impression 1899, pp. 40, 76-8). Darwin's 

 letters * to him are, as Trimen has said, '• an additional illustration 

 of one of the most charming and attractive sides of Darwin's 

 character — the gracious and glad welcome he never failed to 

 extend to any one who even in the slightest degree endeavoured 

 to render him aid in his researches " t. These investigations 

 directh^ stimulated by Darwin, together with Trimen's classical 

 work on Butterfly Mimicry published in 1869 J (Linn. Trans, vol. 

 xxvi. p. 497), led to the award of the Darwin medal by the Royal 

 Society in 1910. He retained the greatest interest in this subject 

 through all the increasing weakness and ill-health of his last years,^ 

 and the present writer can never forget how, less than a month 

 before Trimen's death, the story of recent discoveries in the geo- 

 graphical forms of Pcqnlio dardanus {merope) — the most wonderful 

 of all examples of mimicry, and first interpreted by him nearly 

 half a century earlier, "restored for a moment his failing powers, 

 and brought back his old enthusiasm " §. 



* Darwin's correspondence with the South African naturalist is published 

 in full in 'Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species,' Poulton, London, 1909, 

 pp. 213-246. 



t Ihid. p. 215. 



X Often quoted as 1870, the year in which the Volmnc was published. 

 Trimen's paper, read in 1868, is the first memoir in Fart III, issued in 1869. 



§ ' Nature,' vol. xcvii. 1916, p. 485-86. 



