ORIGINAL MEMBERS, ] 5' 



Mr. JOHN WOLLEY. 



The memory of the Naturalist Avhose death made the first 

 gap in the small society of the promoters of ' The Ibis/ while 

 it inflicted on science in general a serious loss, deserves more 

 than a passing notice in our pages, and the writer of this 

 Memoir, who was closely intimate with John Wolley during 

 his latter years, deems it a duty, at once melancholy and 

 pleasurable in no ordinary degree, to place on record the few 

 bare facts of his brief career. 



Sprung from a Derbyshire family of fair repute and 

 antiquity, the deceased naturalist was born at Matlock, 

 on May ]3th, 1824, being the eldest son of the Rev. John 

 Hurt and Mary his wife, eldest daughter of Adam Wolley, 

 Esq., of Matlock, a gentleman well known as a local 

 historian and the donor of a valuable collection of manu- 

 scripts, still called after him, to the British Museum. At 

 the decease of his father-in-law, in 1827, Mr. Hurt assumed 

 the name and arms of Wolley. 



At an early age John Wolley was sent to Mr. Fletcher^s 

 preparatory school at Southwell, which in 1836 he quitted 

 ibr Eton, where he remained for the next six years. A love 

 for the study of nature shewed itself even in the days of his 

 childhood, though at that time plants and insects shareri 

 his attention fully as much as the higher classes of creation, 

 which at a later period became mainly the objects of his 

 study. Indeed, while at Eton, in his own words, he was 

 "always about the country in all directions in pursuit of 

 Natural History," and he assiduously collected insects and 

 eggs, w bile " he knew every plant that grew about.^' With 

 all this, he was one of the foremost in every manly sport ; 

 and his recollections of having been captain of a '' long-boat " 

 and in '' the eight," Avhile also one of the " oppidan " 

 eleven, and that of "the school" at football, were always 

 amonsr those in which he most delighted. 



