OBITUARY. 133 



By HERBEKT E. PAGE, F.E.S. 



" Whose life was work, whose language rife, 

 With rugged maxims hewn from life ; 

 Who never spoke against a foe." — (Tennyson.) 



By the death of our late Editor, the scientific world has lost one of 

 its most brilliant students, a most strenuous worker, and the writer, 

 his dearest friend. 



James William Tutt was born at Rochester in Kent, on April 26th, 

 1858, and was the son of James Tutt, of Strood, and Sarah Selvage, 

 of Bexley, both of whom could trace their ancestry a long way back 

 from Kentish forbears. 



He became a pupil teacher at St. Nicholas' Church School, 

 Rochester, and afterwards proceeded to St. Mark's College, Chelsea, 

 whence, after a brilliant career, he entered the service of the London 

 Educational Authority. Shortly after, he was offered a Government 

 post as Principal of the College at Calcutta, but considerations of 

 health led him to refuse this opening and continue his work in 

 London. Consequent on several promotions, he was at the time of 

 his death Head Master of Morpeth Street London County Council 

 Central School. 



He married Frances Marsh Collins, also of Rochester, Kent, and 

 has left two sons and three daughters. 



Not finding sufticient scope for his superabundant energies in an 

 ordinary professional day's work, he commenced teaching science 

 every evening in the week at Greenwich and Woolwich, under the 

 auspices of the Board of Education at South Kensington. These 

 winter courses termmated each May after the usual examinations. 

 This left him free to give rein to his passion for the study of Nature 

 and natural objects in the field. Every favourable evening from June 

 to September, found him out with net and treacle pot, and afterwards 

 with dozens of boards filled with hundreds of specimens of his beloved 

 lepidoptera. It is no exaggeration to say he was one of the shrewdest 

 of observers in the field, and one of the most rapid manipulators of 

 the net and setting needle. Consequently he rapidly formed an 

 extensive collection of the British Lepidoptera, from the Diurni to the 

 Tineids, and further, could name any species on the list from sight, 

 and tell what was known of its life-history at a moment's notice. 



He was not in London very long before he became a member of 

 the South London Entomological Society, joining in 1886.. After- 

 wards he attached himself to the City of London Entomological 

 Society, and filled the office of President from 1896-99. He also 

 became a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London at Chandos 

 Street, W., being elected in 1885, and in due course was offered, 

 and accepted a seat on the Council. To show what an active and 

 personal interest he took in these Societies, it is only necessary to 

 mention that he also sat in the Presidential chair of the South London 

 Society. The honour he most coveted was to succeed such brilliant 

 men as Lord Avebury, Lord Walsingham and Professor Poulton in the 

 Presidential Chair of the London Entomological Society, and had he 

 been spared he would have attained his heart's desire, as he was 

 President-elect at the time of his death. But it was not to be. He 



