66 



[March, 



bituanr. 



William Lucas Bidant, we regret to announce, died on February 4tli, in 

 a nursing home at Wanstead, Essex, aged 77 years. He was born at Kother- 

 liithe on November 12th, 1845, and was the only surviving son of 

 Capt. Alexander Distant, in whose company on a whaling voyage to the 

 Malayan Peninsula, in 1867, he first developed a love for natural history. In 

 his early life Uistaut was connected with a tannery in London, and while 

 engaged in this business he paid two lengthy visits to the Tran.svaal, and thus 

 became interested in the fauna of that region. The experiences of his first 

 journey there, 1890-1, are related in his "Naturalist in the Transvaal" (1892). 

 The second visit, made a few years later, was of much longer duration (about 

 four years in all), and gave him sufficient time to amass a large collection of 

 insects, many of these being described and figured in his " Insecta Trans- 

 vaaliensia," twelve parts of which (forming Vol. I) were issued, 1900-11. 

 From April 1899-November 1920 he was employed by the Trustees of the 

 Natural History Museum at S. Kensington to look after and rearrange their 

 extensive collection of Rhynchota, this work occupying him two or three days 

 a week, till failing health put an end to it. Distant began by taking up the 

 study of exotic Lepidoptera, and his first article on this subject appeared in this 

 Magazine in November 1874. But after the publication of the " Illiopalocera 

 Malayana " (1882-6) he devoted nearly the whole of his time to the lihyn- 

 chota. His chief contributions on this subject are, Heteroptera, Vol. I, and 

 Somoptera, Vol. I (part), of the " Biologia Ceutrali-Araericana" (1880-1905) ; 

 a "Monograxih of the Oriental Cicadidae" (1889-92); and the Heteroptera 

 and Homoptera of the "Fauna of British India," 7 vols, in all, 1902-18. 

 A very lai"ge number of papers by him on these and kindred subjects have 

 appeared in our scientific journals, mainly in the " Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History " and in the " Entomologist " ; his last paper in the " Annals," 

 on Rhynchota from New Caledonia, is dated November 1920. In addition to 

 this lengthy list, he has contributed numerous papers to foreign periodicals, 

 and described the Rhynchota captured by expeditions to the Seychelles, New 

 Guinea, New Caledonia, Kashgar, etc. 



A contemporary of Bates, Pascoe, Meldola, McLachlan, C. 0. Waterhouse, 

 and W. F. Kirby, he was well known to the older school of entomologists. 

 The deatJi of his wife in 1914, and the loss of one of his sons by drowning in 

 Australia in 1913 and the death of another in hospital in Alexandria in 1915, 

 greatly affected him, and we fear that the subsequent years of his life must have 

 been very unhappy, aggravated in the end by the development of cancer, to 

 which he finally succumbed. Few men, however, have kept up their love of 

 entomological work over so long a period, 1874-1920, and he will be missed 

 by many of the habitues of the Insect Room of the Natural History Museum. 



Distant was elected a member of the Soci6te Entomologique de France in 

 1868, and a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London in 1875, serving 

 as Secretary of the latter in 1878-80, and as Vice-President in 1881 and 1900. 

 He was Director and Honorary Secretary of the Anthropological Institute, 

 1878-81 ; Editor of the '"' Zoologist," 1897-1914 ; and was also a member of 

 the Societe Eutomologique de Belgique. 



