THE ENTOMOLOGIST 



Vol. XXXIV.] FEBKUARY. 1901. [No. 453. 



THE LATE JOHN HENRY LEECH. 



Mr. J. H. Leech, whose death we briefly announced in our 

 last number, was the eldest son of the late Mr. John Leech, of 

 Gorse Hall, Dukinfield, Cheshire, and of Mrs. Leech, of 4, Ken- 

 sington Palace Gardens. He was educated at Eton and at 

 Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree. Quite 

 early in his boyhood he evinced a strong passion for all kinds of 

 natural history objects, and later he commenced to systematically 

 collect and to study both Coleoptera and Lepidoptera. Although 

 he had lost his left hand, the result of a gun accident in his 

 college days, he was able to net and to box or bottle insects 

 in the field almost or quite as deftly as before the misfortune 

 occurred. 



His first attempt to give practical effect to his views respecting 

 the purpose and utility of a collection was in 1886, when he was 

 chiefly interested in British Lepidoptera. He then published 

 ' British Pyralides,' a book in which all the Deltoids, Pyralides, 

 Crambi, and Pterophori, known at that date to occur in these 

 islands, were each represented by a coloured figure. No doubt he 

 would have produced similar works on the other neglected 

 groups of moths if he had not about that time devised a very 

 much more ambitious scheme in the interests of science. This 

 was no less than the exploration of Japan, Corea, and certain 

 untried or little known parts ^ the North-western Himalayas, 

 and of Central and Western China. This plan was no sooner 

 matured than it was put into execution, and from 1886 to 1893 

 there was a steady accumulation of entomological material in his 

 museum from the countries mentioned. After 1887 he did not, 

 himself, again collect abroad, but commenced to work out and to 

 publish papers on the Lepidoptera he had met with in his travels, 

 or had received from his collectors ; and he continued to find 

 pleasure in these labours up to almost the last month or so of 



ENTOM. — FEBRUARY, 1901. 15 



