1884.1 23 



sides Cambridge, we must now include Cork as a locality. I have seen specimens, 

 belonging to Mr. de Y. Kane, wliicli he informs me were caught in that neighbourhood. 

 — W. Waeeen, Merton Cottage, Cambridge : May 15th, 1884. 



Effect of Cyanide upon colour. — A very curious case of artificial colouring in a 

 butterfly has been sent me by a friend. He says that the specimen, a male Oonop- 

 teryx rhamni, was placed in a spare cyanide bottle, and left undisturbed for two 

 years ; but that, at some intermediate time, the stopper was tampered with and not 

 properly replaced, so that air was introduced. The result is, that the butterfly is 

 richly coloured with crimson along the costal area, and partially round the other 

 margins of the fore-wings, and has large blotches of the same on the hind-wings. 

 Indeed, the only portion of the wings which is left entirely of the usual brimstone 

 colour is that portion which, in &. Cleopatra, is clouded with crimson. — Chas. Q-. 

 Baeeett, Pembroke : ^th April, 1884. 



(©bituitrg. 



Edwin Birchall died at Douglas, Isle of Man, on May 2nd, at the age of 65. 

 He was born, we believe, near Leeds, in which town his father was in business in a 

 large way. His early education was received in Leeds, but subsequently he was sent 

 to the Friends' school at York, and among his schoolfellows were T. H. Allis, 

 B. B. Labrey, Tuffen West, and Benjamin and Nicholas Cooke, all of whom subse- 

 quently made reputations as naturalists. He became a partner in his father's firm, 

 which sometime after got into difficulties, and he then became Messrs. Pickford and 

 Co.'s agent at Dublin, and, afterwards, at Liverpool. Subsequently he started in busi- 

 ness on his own account in Bradford, but soon gave it up, and after holding, for a time, 

 an official capacity in Leeds, settled in the Isle of Man. For several years he had been 

 in very bad health, originating, probably, from a fall down a cliff while engaged in ento- 

 mological pursuits. Edwin Birchall was a born naturalist, an enthusiastic collector, 

 and of an extremely genial and buoyant disposition ; at the same time he was a strong 

 partisan, and enjoyed a controversy in print, especially on theological matters. His 

 first published note (not entomological) with which we are acquainted, appeared in the 

 " Zoologist " for 1850, p. 2954. Afterwards he was a constant contributor on Entomo- 

 logical subjects to the various periodicals. His residence in Ireland brought him more 

 prominently forward ; the entomology of that island was but little known. Edwin 

 Birchall set himself to work, with characteristic energy, to investigate its Lepidop- 

 terous fauna, with the result of discovering fine new British species, and remarkable 

 local varieties of others already known. These investigations culminated in a List of 

 the Lepidoptera of Ireland that appeared in Vol. ii (1866-7) of this Magazine, 

 which may be regarded as about the most important of his published papers. In it 

 he enumerated 961 species (a few more were added in supplements) as against 636 

 in the previous Irish List Furthermore, these investigations brought him into 

 correspondence with Darwin, Wallace, and other natural philosophers, who profited 



• by his judiciously-reasoned ideas on the origin of the British Lepidopterous fauna, 

 and on that of Ireland in particular. 



Mr. Birchall had been long a widower, but leaves three sons and one daughter ; 



jij the latter devotedly attended her father during his long illness, and some of his 

 published notes were illustrated by her pencil. 



