March, 1910. ! 



49 



EDWARD SAUNDERS, F.R.S. 



EDWAED SAUNDERS, F.R.S., an Editor of this Magazine 

 since 1880, and a frequent and valued contributor to it from tlie 

 appearance of its first volume in 1864 up to the present year, passed 

 quietly away in sea-side lodgings at Bognor on February 6th, 1910. 

 In the present month he would have completed his 62nd year, 

 having been born on March 22nd, 1848, at East Hill, Wandsworth. 



His father, the late W. Wilson Saimders — also F.R.S. — held 

 for a time a commission in the Royal Engineers, and won some 

 credit while serving in that capacity under the Indian Grovernment. 

 But leaving the Army at the time of his marriage, he became 

 a member of " Lloyd's " ; and for many years was exceedingly well- 

 known and respected in business circles, and also in those of science 

 and art. He lived on familiar terms with most of the naturalists of 

 his day, and was himself a frequent writer of short papers on 

 scientific subjects, but was perhaps best known through the impor- 

 tant collections of art and natural history formed by him at 

 Hillfield, Reigate, to which house he removed in 1857. It was by 

 serious work (begun at a very early age) upon these collections that 

 Edward Saunders, who was educated entirely at home, laid the first 

 foundations of his future eminence. He devoted himself first 

 to the Coleoptera, but acquired also considerable familiarity with 

 Entomology in general, and with several other of the " Systematic " 

 sciences, such as Botany and Conchology. At the age of 16 he 

 pubHshed a paper in the first volume of the Ent. Mo. Mag. on 

 " Coleoptera at Lowestoft," and was afterwards for some years 

 mainly occupied in studying the Buprestidas of the world. A 

 succession of Notes, Descriptions, Revisions of particular collections, 

 groups, &c., bearing on this subject, were commimicated by him to 

 the Transactions of the Entomological Society from 1866 to 1869 ; 

 in 1870 he published a " Catalogue of the species contained in the 



