THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 261 



in Entomology was first exhibited at home, when, as a mere 

 chihl, his attention was attracted by the butterHies, which, in 

 the fruit season, came to feed on the ripe plums and apricots 

 in his father's gardens : Vanessa C-Album is especially men- 

 tioned ; and Limenitis Sibylla, another species no longer found 

 in the vicinity of London, was then common at Southgate. 



In 1816 Mr. Walker's parents were staying with their 

 family at Geneva, then the centre of a literary coterie, in 

 which they met, among other celebrities. Lord Byron, 

 Madame de Stael, and the naturalists De Saussure and 

 Vernet. They spent more than a year at Geneva and Vevey, 

 and in 1818 proceeded to Lucerne, from which place Francis, 

 then a boy nine years of age, made the ascent of Mont 

 Pilatus, in company with his elder brother Henr}-; their 

 object, in addition to the ever-delightful one of mountain- 

 climbing, being the collecting of butterflies. The family 

 afterwards visited Neuwied, and returned to Arno's Grove 

 in 1820. 



In 1830 the two brothers, Henry and Francis, again 

 visited the Continent, and now it was purely an entomological 

 tour, the late Mr. Curtis, the well-known author of ' British 

 Entomology,' being their companion. This party collected 

 most assiduously in the island of Jersey, and afterwards at 

 Fontainebleau, Montpellier, Lyons, Nantes, Vaucluse, &c., 

 the French Satyrida?, of which they formed very fine 

 collections, being their principal object. 



Mr, Walker's career as an author commenced in 1832. He 

 contributed, to the first number of the 'Entomological Maga- 

 zine,' the introductory chapter of his ' Monographia Chal 

 ciditum,' a work on the minute parasitic Hymenoptera, — a 

 tribe of insects which he ever afterwards studied with the 

 most assiduous attention, and one on which he immediately 

 became the leading authority. He was then only twenty- 

 three years of age ; but his writings exhibited a depth of 

 research and maturity of judgment which have rarely been 

 excelled, and which abundantly evince the time and talent 

 he had already devoted to these insects. It is worthy of 

 notice that he now descended from the largest and most 

 showy to the smallest and least conspicuous of insects, 

 doubtless feeling that whereas among the magnificent butter- 

 flies there was little opportunity for the discovery of novelties, 

 among the Chalcidites everything was new, — everything 



