nc [February, 



Life Guards caused liim to turn to politics, and he was elected M.P. for 

 West Norfolk (Conservative) in I860, retaining his seat until he suc- 

 ceeded to the title in 1870. He was a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen 

 Victoria 1874-5. 



There is an inherited tendency to the Law in the de Grey family, 

 and Lord Walsingham ought really to have chosen Law rather than 

 Parliament — as Chairman of Quarter Sessions, etc., he was in his natui-al 

 element. He was elected High Steward of the University of Cambridge 

 n 1891 (when the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him) and of the 

 Borough of King's Lynn in 1894. By the death of Lord Walsingham 

 the British Museum loses its oldest Trustee; he was appointed in 1876, 

 serving on the Standing Committee for many years, and always taking 

 the greatest interest in everything connected with the welfare of the 

 Museum and the Collections, to which his own entomological library and 

 collections were transferred in 1910; he was also a Trustee of the 

 Hunterian Museum (Royal College of Surgeons), and of the Lawes 

 Agricultuml Tinist. 



During a busy life he never neglected his love for Zoology — 

 through his schooldays and throughout his life he was a collector and 

 close observer of the Lepidoptera and other orders. He must have 

 collected more than 50,000 specimens of "Microlepidoptera" in England, 

 France, Monte Carlo, Italy, Spain, Sicily, Corfu, Germany, Austria, 

 Algeria, Morocco, the Canaries, California and Oregon, Jamaica, etc., 

 breeding thousands of specimens, the life-history of many of which he 

 discovered, and describing numerous new species. As an ontomologist 

 Lord Walsingham commenced by collecting Lepidoptera in the usual 

 way, but gradually devoted himself to their life-histories, and his 

 British Collection developed into series accompanied by preserved 

 larvae mounted in natural positions on the best copies of the actual 

 plants procurable — [to Lord Walsingham I believe we owe the adop- 

 tion of the ether-bellows for inflation]. The Collection of British 

 Lepidoptera Avith their larvae is well-known to all ; it was presented 

 to the Museum many years ago and is exhibited in the Insect 

 Gallery. 



Lord Walsingham's attention was first directed to the so-called 

 " micros " at one of Stevens's sales. He was so struck by a drawer of 

 Adelidae that he purchased them, and thenceforth devoted his life to 

 amassing the enormous collection of " Microlepidoptera " now at South 

 Kensington, purchasing at various dates the " micros " in the Zeller, 

 Hofmann, Christoph, and other collections. 



