335 
OBITUARY. 
Dr. David Sharp, M. D., F.R.S., etc. 
To our society the death of Dr. David Sharp is an irretriev- 
able loss. The work and time which he devoted to the entomol- 
ogy of our Islands and the influence he exercised upon others 
working on our insect fauna placed him in a unique position. 
His death removes the second of the three men to whom we 
owe most of our knowledge of our insects. 
Sharp was born at Towcaster, Northamptonshire, England, 
in 1840, but his parents moved to Stony Stratford, where he 
spent the first ten or eleven years of his life, and afterward to 
London. In 1853 he entered St. John’s Foundation School, 
where he remained until he left to enter his father’s business. 
At this time Herbert Spencer was living with his family, and it 
is evident that the writings and personality of this eminent phil- 
osopher influenced Sharp’s mind and perhaps gave it that keen 
and logical quality which characterized his whole life and works. 
Finding commercial life uncongenial he decided to study medi- 
cine. He first attended St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, 
and afterward studied at Edinburgh University, where he grad- 
uated in 1866 with the degrees M.B. and C.M. After acting 
as assistant to his family’s doctor in London he moved to 
Thornhill, Scotland, in 1867, where he was appointed to the 
Crichton Institute at Dumfries. In 1884 he moved to South- 
ampton, England, and later to Dartford, Kent. In 1890 he 
was appointed curator of the insect collection of the University 
Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, where he remained until 1909, 
when he retired to Brockenhurst, in the south of England, for 
the rest of his life. He died August 27, 1922, shortly before 
his eighty-second birthday. 
Sharp was interested in insects when a boy and _ collected 
Lepidoptera before he left school. He must have turned his 
attention to Coleoptera shortly before 1861; his note book of 
captures begins on April 16 of that year. His first publication 
was in 1865 and is a short paper on British species of Aga- 
thidium. In 1869 he published “A Revision of the British 
Species of Homalota,’’ which showed his great ability for sys- 
tematic work. He retained his love for the Staphylinidae all 
