52 [March, 



had no " sanctiun," and no '' close time '" for study. It was really 

 only by utilizing all liis odds and ends of time ; by the perfect method 

 of his arrangements, so that he knew exactly where to look for any 

 book or other article which he wanted ; and by his phenomenal power 

 of concentrating attention on a subject, or allowing it to be diverted 

 for an interval, exactly as he pleased ; that he was able gradually to 

 build up his materials for a book or paper of any length, brick by 

 brick, as it were, until the whole was completed. Obviously, the work 

 of a systematist (which deals at any one time with a few facts only, 

 and which at every step is completed as far as it goes), must suffer 

 less from the sort, of siu-roiuidings described above, than the welding 

 of vast masses of experiment and observation into a connected chain 

 of argument, such as we find in a work of Darwin's. ^Vliat Saunders 

 might have achieved in wider fields, had he been able to make science 

 the business of his life, it is useless now to conjecture. For present 

 purposes it is enough to say, that he contrived, under apparently most 

 unfavourable conditions, to produce a series of important works, which 

 have been useful to inniunerable beginners, and to many serious 

 students and even masters of science ; which have been treated with 

 something more than respect by foreign naturahsts who have no great 

 lielief in English entomology as a whole ; and which will long (and 

 perhaps even always) remain standard authorities on the subjects dealt 

 with in them. And, at the same time, he foimd or made leisure to 

 exchange correspondence and specimens with the foremost entomologists 

 of every country in Eur(_ipe ; to determine insects and answer letters 

 from all sorts and conditions of collectors in England, Scotland, Wales, 

 and Ireland ; and generally, for more than half his life-time, to 

 stimidate in a hundred quiet ways the progress of his favourite science 

 among his owti countrymen. From one method only of popularizing 

 it he completely abstained. He had an invincible disHke of speaking 

 in pviblic ; and except very rarely, and then only to small and special 

 audiences, could never bring himself to deliver a formal lecture. 



In 1865 Saunders entered his father's ofiice at Lloyd's, thus 

 commencing a business career which he pursued amid universal respect 

 till his last fatal illness, and in which he was assisted latterly, and is 

 noAV succeeded, by one of his sons. In 1872 he married Miss M. A. 

 Brown, of Wandsworth, who (as well as all but one of many sons and 

 daughters) survives him. Of his happy and l^eautiful home-life, the 

 present writer, after intimate contact with it for many years, will here 

 say simply that to have witnessed it was a privilege, and ought to have 

 been an inspiration. From the time of his marriage up to 1887 he 



