84 [March, 



The change from a nomad life to the close routine of office work must have 

 heen heavily felt by him, but he at once settled down quietly to his new duties, his 

 early business experience and his eminently methodical habits no doubt aiding 

 largely. His services to the G-eographical Society will be fully acknowledged else- 

 where ; but no pen can recount his innumerable acts of kindness and words of wise 

 counsel offered to the hosts of embryo explorers who sought, and never in vain, his 

 advice. His position at the Society materially aided Entomology in an indirect 

 manner. It was his practice to equip intending explorers with apparatus, and to 

 instruct them in collecting, and by this means he added vastly to his collections and 

 to those of others. 



During his sojourn on the Amazons he put together an enormous mass of biolo- 

 gical notes in MS., copiously illustrated by sketches, for he was no mean artist. 

 These notes still exist, but (with the exception of those on the Tennifidce) un- 

 published. As a philosophical Naturalist he was a profound student of the bearings 

 of the phenomena he witnessed in his investigations of the rich Amazonian Fauna 

 on the question of the Origin of Species and cognate matters, and a close friendship 

 existed between him and Charles Darwin, as the writings of the latter abundantly 

 show. That he was a thorough evolutionist is certain ; that he remained a believer 

 in Natural Selection as the sole factor in the Origin of Species may be not so certain. 

 In 1862 he produced his notable memoir on Mimetic Resemblances, as illustrated 

 by the Heliconidce (" Contributions to an Insect-Fauna of the Amazons Valley, 

 SeliconidcB," Trans. Linn. Soc), which took the world by surprise. There is, 

 we venture to say, reason to believe that, although he did not alter his faith in 

 the main points advanced in that memoir, he deplored the extravagant lengths to 

 which his reasonings, as detailed therein, were made subservient to trivialities 

 by some who succeeded him. Otherwise he devoted all his leisure to Systematic 

 Entomology. At first the Rhopalocera engaged his attention, and especially the 

 Papilionidce and Erycinidce, his Catalogue of the latter (published in the Journal 

 of the Linnean Society) having been adopted as a basis by succeeding authors. 

 Many years ago he sold his collection of Butterflies to Messrs. Grodman and Salvin, 

 and thenceforth occupied himself with Coleoptera, and especially Geodephaga, 

 Lamellicorns, and Longicorns. On these groups his publications have been very 

 numerous, for they were not confined to his Contributions to the Fauna of the Amazons 

 Valley, but concerned the whole world, some as papers in Transactions and Periodi- 

 cals, many in the published accounts of explorations, and lastly in the " Biologia 

 Centrali Amei'icana," to the entomological portion of which his contributions form 

 a prominent feature. Failing health induced him to sell his Longicorns to M. Rene 

 Oberthiir shortly before his death, and the rest of his collections are likely to leave 

 our shores unless some means can be found for retaining them. For a considerable 

 time he had been engaged on a new classification of the CarahidcB on certain oral 

 structures. This was to have been his magnum opus as he himself used to say ; but 

 it was never to be completed. It is impossible for us to give a list of his works. 

 There is scarcely a volume of this Magazine in which his contributions do not 

 appear. Our first No. in 1864 commenced with a paper from his pen, and one of 

 the last papers he wrote was published in our No. for November, 1891. 



In 1861 he was elected a Member of the Entomological Society of London, of 

 which he was President in 1868 and 1869, and again in 1878. In 1871 he was ad- 



