1922.] 235 



was then enabled to discontinue active medical practice .id to devote himself 

 entirely to scientific work. For several years he resided at Shirley Warren, 

 Southampton, and afterwards at Wilmington, near Dartford, Kent ; and in 

 1890 he accepted an invitation to undertake the charge of the insect col- 

 lections of the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge. He retained 

 the Curatorship of this collection until 1909, when, having built for himself 

 a house at Brockenhurst overlooking one of the most beautiful parts of the 

 New Forest, he retired thither for the remainder of his days. 



As is so often the case, his attention was first given to the Lepidoptera, 

 and he used to relate that one of his earliest recollections was that of the sur- 

 passing beauty of a newly-emerged " tiger-moth." But his energies were soon 

 transferred to the Coleoptera, the object of his life-long study, and the Order 

 with which his name will be inseparably associated in the future. Already, in 

 the short-lived "Weekly Entomologist" (1862-3), we find, besides lists of 

 numerous captures, a faeries of directions for the mounting and preservation 

 Of bdjtlej which thus early mark him as an excellent practical Coleopterist. 



The magnitude of Dr. Sharp's entomological work during his long life 

 may be estimated by the fact that no fewer than 257 entries stand under his 

 name in the Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers, and the " Zoological 

 Record" to date, besides a multitude of minor articles in our own and other 

 Magazines. It is obviously impossible to give here an exhaustive account of 

 this great contribution to the literature of our Science, but a few of its 

 principal items may be briefiy alluded to. 



In the Transactions of the Entomological So-iety for 18G9 appeared his 

 earliest paper of first-rate importance, " A Revision of the British Species 

 of Honialota," which to this day remains the foundation of our knowledge 

 of the extensive and most difficult group of beetles included under this 

 generic name. It may be added that during the hd-^t few years he accumu- 

 lated a very large amount of material, including many beautiful dissections 

 and drawings by his accomplished daughter Anne (now Mrs. F. Muir), for ix, 

 contemplated further revision of the group. This, we venture to hope, may at 

 some time in the near future be made available for students of Coleoptera. 

 The Staphylinidae of Japan (1874) and of the Amazon Valley (1876) formed 

 the subject of exhaustive papers in subsequent volumes of the Transactions, 

 but his most important contribution to the Society's publications is without 

 doubt the masterly treatise (in conjunction with Mr. F. Muir) " On the Com- 

 parative Anatomy of the Male Genital Tube in Coleoptera," which appeared 

 in 1912. 



" On Aquatic Carnivorous Coleoptera or Dytiscidae," published in the 

 Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society in 1880-2, is an exhaustive 

 monograph of this great series of beetles which still remains the principal 

 authority on the subject. In the same Journal (1885) appeared the papers on 

 the Coleoptera of the Hawaiian Islands (with the Rev. T. Blackburn) and of 

 New Zealand, in which Dr. Sharp was the first to elucidate the surpassing- 

 interest and importance of these isoLited beetle-faunae ; and many years after- 

 wards, when he was editor of the sumptuous " Fauna Hawaiiensis," he 

 contributed the memoirs on the Caraboidea and some other groups indigenous 

 to the first-named islands. In the " Biologia Centrali-Americana," he was 



