TUTT AS I KNEW HIM. 



Ill 



and help to one who had at that time no sort of claim on either ; the 

 other was the strength of his fighting instinct. In the introduction 

 to my book I have upheld several unpopular positions, and he sent me 

 a letter he had received from another well-known entomologist, to 

 show me the sort of treatment I might expect in consequence. I 

 wrote asking his advice as to whether it would be better to suppress 

 reference to these views in the introduction, at the same time assert- 

 ing my determination to continue working on the same lines in the 

 body of the book ; " No, no," he replied, " stick to it and fight it out." 

 Several were points he had at one time fought for himself, but had given 

 them up because they took time from more valuable work, but the 

 sight of them again was as the trumpet to the war-horse, and I fear 

 he has encouraged me more than once to break out again. 



Balancing his readiness to help others was his unrivalled power of 

 making others help him. I must tell the story of how I found this 

 out, for it is so delightfully characteristic of his methods. He had 

 come upon me one day in the Museum at South Kensington, when I 

 was hard at work on the Melitaeas, in preparation for the paper (not 

 then begun, and still, after three years, unfinished) which I was pro- 

 posing to write for the Entonwloijist, and he observed : " I wish I 

 could induce you to work at the Lycfenids a bit." I rather hesitated, 

 not because I was unwilling to help him, for I had then already 

 written the index and synopses of the first four volumes of his British 

 Lepidoptera, but because my thoughts were at that time entirely 

 occupied with another group, but at last said : " Well, when I have 

 got some of this off my mind I will see Avhat I can do." Two or 

 three days, I think, elapsed, and then I received a colossal package, 

 partly of proofs that required correcting, partly of detailed points 

 which required checking, and partly of more definite research work 

 which he wanted done first hand. I don't know whether I was more 

 amused or appalled, but it was impossible to refuse, and from that 

 day till the time of his last illness I was kept pretty steadily at work ! 

 I understood a good deal after that day, which had been somewhat of a 

 mystery to me before. The extraordinary rapidity with which he 

 could work himself, sometimes, perhaps, made him fail to realise the 

 strain which was occasionally put on his very willing helpers, and if 

 one may venture a criticism, he was not always as careful as he might 

 have been to avoid unnecessary overlapping in their work, which 

 indeed was also the principal fault in his own writings. 



It has been said of him that he was apt to show impatience with 

 those whose views he held to be wrong, but nothing could be more 

 opposed to my experience of him. Nothing for instance could have 

 exceeded the patience he displayed in trying (quite unsuccessfully) to 

 bring me round to his views on varietal nomenclature, even though he 

 was fully aware that all work done for him would conform strictly to 

 his own lines, so that it was solely for my own intellectual welfare and 

 with no ulterior object of his own to gain. 



No one, again, could, if they knew him, regard him as a man with 

 one interest ; it was as great a treat to have a talk with him (or 

 perhaps more strictly to hear him talk) on educational as on 

 entomological matters. In whatever line he had taken up he would 

 have been great. An indefatigable worker, a keen observer, closely 

 attentive to detail, with a deep vein of poetry in his nature, a powerful 



