1884] 235 



came to be regulated so as to suit the convenience of the larva of any species that 

 had not been figured before, and even bodily ailments, which might have frightened 

 most into desisting from close application to such work, were resolutely conquered by 

 the exercise of a strong determination : his right hand was at times subject to a 

 kind of palsy, called, I believe from an allusion to a frequent cause of it, " Scrivener's 

 thumb," and during these attacks he could scarcely write legibly, much less hold a 

 pencil to draw with ; when this was so, his remedy was to set himself a task of 

 carpentering ; he had a. full chest of tools, and was a beautifully neat workman, in 

 fact, he made his own cabinet of 24 drawers in capital style ; but for exercise he 

 would work for a week, or a month, or whatever time he felt necessary, at house- 

 carpentering, mending all the doors, window frames, boxes, &c., that were found out 

 of repair, and thus he would bring his rebellious nerves and muscles to their finer 

 work ; and though he became slower as age advanced, yet to the last he could use 

 his pencil for the faithful representation of the most delicate pattern and colouring ; 

 I believe I have the last figure he drew, namely, the copy of one he had taken of a 

 larva of Deilephila euphorbicB, which had been sent to us by Dr. Chapman from the 

 Continent, and this done in November last is perfect in all its intricacy of detail as 

 well as in general outline and effect. And so he toiled on year after year, meaning 

 when he had reached a certain point, to lay aside the pencil, and give all his time 

 and energy to the work of publication. Whether he would ever have satisfied 

 himself that he had done enough, I almost doubt ; as his work went on, it seemed 

 to grow before him ; details, which at first were slightly noticed, assumed their real 

 importance, and he found himself obliged to repeat observations over and over 

 again ; fifteen years ago he had begun to wonder whether he should live long 

 enough to begin to publish ; after three years' attention to some common species of 

 Agrotis, he wrote that he had burnt many of his figures, as he had come to find 

 them incorrect ; and quite recently he was figuring again such species as Pieris 

 brassicoR and Cheiniatohia hrumata. 



As the readers of this Magazine are aware, he had recently resolved to avail 

 himself of Continental help in procuring species not easily attainable here, and this, 

 as well as the adoption of the mm. as a scale of measurement, is remarkable as com- 

 ing at an age, when changes are to most men no longer acceptable ; but a stronger 

 mark of his keeping his mind to the last fresh and open is given by the fact, that 

 after his sixty-eighth birthday he procured a Grerman grammar and exercise book, 

 and worked hard at them all through the winter of 1882-83, in the confident hope 

 of being by and by able to read the letters of his German correspondents, and to tell 

 them what he wanted in his own handwriting, and I know that in this view Prof. 

 Zeller's death was a great blow to him. Mr. Buckler possessed nothing that could 

 be called a library ; the res angusta domi forbade the acquisition of expensive books, 

 but this made the loan of a standard work from a friend all the more appreciated as 

 a great delight ; he would sit up into the small hours of the night mastering its 

 contents, or neatly copying out page after page, that struck him as containing valuable 

 help for his own purpose ; and so, too, with illustrated books, he must have taken 

 copies of hundreds of the figures in the plates of Hiibner and Sepp and others. 

 Wlien we first became correspondents, and he was still sore from the injury which 

 photography had done him, he had a whimsical way of taking revenge by getting 

 himself photographed in all sorts of stiff attitudes and sullen expressions, such as all 



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