1912.] 2^9 



The Rev. Thomas Blaclchurn, B.A. — The last survivor of the original Editors 

 of this Magazine passed away in tlie person of the Rev. Thomas Blackburn, at 

 Woodville Vicarage, Adelaide, South Australia, on May 19th last, at the age of 

 more tlian 70 years. In company with his elder brother, the late Mr. J. B. 

 Blackbvirn, he early tvii-ned his attention to the study of insects, and we first 

 find him contributing notes to the later numbers of the " Entomologist's 

 Weekly Intelligencer." A few months after this periodical ceased to appear in 

 1862, he started with commendable enterprise a magazine on similar lines, the 

 " Weekly Entomologist," published at first at Altrincham, Cheshire, and after- 

 wards in London ; this came to an end in November, 1863, after 65 numbers 

 had been issued. Ovir own Magazine commenced in the following year, with 

 Mr. Blackburn as one of the five original editors, but his name disappeared 

 from the list after the close of the first vohuue. About that time he decided to 

 leave the Civil Service and to take Holy Orders ; his interest in entomology, 

 however, continued, and he contribvited several articles to oiu* earlier volumes, 

 mainly on British Coleoptera. Towards the end of 1876 he went to the 

 Hawaiian Islands as chaplain to the Bishop of Honolvilu, and the insect fauna, 

 then all but unknown, of these islands naturally claimed his attention. The 

 results of collecting and observation during a residence of more than six years 

 are embodied in an important joint paper with Dr. D. Sharp, " Memoirs on the 

 Coleoptera of the Hawaiian Islands," in the Scientific Transactions of the Eoyal 

 Dublin Society for 1885. In these Memoirs a large niunber of new and most 

 remarkable endemic forms are desci'ibed by the two authors, and in them we 

 realize for the first time the stirpassing interest of the insect fatma of this 

 small island group, isolated in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. We next find 

 Mr. Blackburn at his South Australian vicarage, engaged in the study of the 

 far more varied and extensive Coleopterous fauna of the Island-Continent. 

 Manj' hundreds of new species were described by him from 1887 onwards in the 

 Australian scientific periodicals, mainly in the " Transactions of the Eoyal 

 Society of South Australia"; and the type-specimens of all these have, we 

 believe, been recently acquired by our own Natural History Museum. It need 

 hardly be said that he was regarded as the leader of the energetic little band of 

 Australian Coleopterists, to whom his name was a household word ; and the 

 writer of this notice recalls with much pleasure the genial kindness and hosjji- 

 tality extended to him by Mr. Blackburn during his two very brief visits to 

 Adelaide in 1891 and 1901. 



George Masters. — We have to deplore the loss of another well-known 

 Australian Entomologist, Mr. George Masters, who died at Sydney, N.S.W., 

 on June 26th, at the ripe age of 75 years. He was a native of Mid-Kent, and 

 went to Australia about the year 1860, shortly afterwards proceeding on an 

 extended collecting tour to Port Denison and Gayndah, Queensland. On this 

 trip he accvimulated an enormous series of rare and unknown forms, chiefly of 

 Coleoptera, of which a large number were described by Sir W. Macleay ; this 

 was followed by equally successful journeys to Western Australia and Tasmania, 

 and in 1875 he was a member of Macleay's important scientific expedition to 



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