OBITUARY. 



225 



horticulture, and his monograph on the Lilies remains to-day the most 

 beautiful standard work on that lovely group of plants, whilst his last 

 great work was on " The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland." On all 

 his travels he was a very keen observer of nature and a great lover of 

 birds and insects, in fact he was an all round field naturalist of great 

 ability, and, as does not always happen, he was also a good gystematist. 

 A large portion of his collection of insects was given by him to the 

 British Museum, and he himself arranged much of the Palaearctic 

 material so far as regards the Rhopalocera. The probability is that 

 had not the war broken out, the whole of his insects would have come 

 to the nation, but as things turned out he sold the remainder to Mr. 

 Joicey. 



As a large landowner he took a very practical interest in farming, 

 and was an expert on land cultivation and on stock ; he was specially 

 interested in sheep breeding, and brought together very many breeds 

 from all over the world. 



His travels covered a great part of the world, from the Rockies and 

 the Andes on the one hand to the Himalayas and the mountains of 

 China and Japan on the other. The one continent he never visited 

 was Africa, and considering his great love for big game this is very 

 remarkable, but he once told the writer that he never had any desire 

 to visit that part of the world. His travels made him think, and made 

 him in his many papers and monographs make deductions that were 

 well in advance of the methods and systems of his day. His papers 

 on the genera Poruansins and Erebia will be remembeied at once, whilst 

 his list of the Sikkim insects is a valuable piece of geographical dis- 

 tribution, and when he visited and collected in Formosa, and found 

 that the insects of Formosa, and I believe the birds also, were identical 

 in genera, and largely so in species as well, with those of Sikkim, he 

 became very keen to institute a comparison of these areas, but he did 

 not live to see this done. He was a member of very many Scientific 

 Societies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the year 

 1897. He was President of the Entomological Society of London 

 for the years 1893 and 1894, having been elected a member 

 in 1878. He was a man of a dominating personality and independent 

 judgment, and as a consequence was a bad opponent to fight, but he 

 was a staunch friend, and once having made a friendship he was true 

 to the end, and could be and was as gentle on the one hand as he could 

 be drastic on the other. It is only about a couple of months ago since 

 the writer saw him at Colesborne, and it was indeed a sorrow to see the 

 bent figure and the difficulty of movement, though his brain was as 

 clear and active as ever ; it was, however, charming to hear that " he 

 could not complain, for he had had a fine and active, and varied life, 

 and so he was content," and we said goodbye to each other knowing 

 that we should not, in this world, meet again, but I did not think the 

 end would come so soon. 



He leaves a widow and a son, with numerous grandchildren, to 

 whom we tender our sincere sympathy. — G.T.B-B. 



