58 THE ENTOMOLOGISt. 



entailing a vast amount of patient labour and study. 

 Indeed, it is those only who can remember the state of our 

 English collections of thirty years ago who can really appre- 

 ciate Doubleday's work, and the good that has been effected 

 by the compilation of his List, in which he not only reduced 

 many so-called species to their proper rank of mere synonyms 

 or varieties, but reformed the whole nomenclature of the order, 

 and brought it into unison with that adopted on the Continent. 



But the most noticeable thing in Henry Doubleday was 

 his constant and careful observation of the habits and 

 Natural History of species. Probably no man ever reared so 

 many British Lepidoptera, and certainly no man ever acquired 

 the same amount of knowledge of the economy and habits of 

 so many species as he. If he could have been induced to 

 take his own List in his hand, and write down all he knew of 

 the different species, his observations would have made such 

 a book as has not yet been written. But though ever ready 

 to communicate information to others, for publication or 

 otherwise, he was never anxious himself to rush into print; 

 and it was only in reply to enquiries that his experience 

 could be drawn out. His diary contained occasional short 

 entries of the occurrence of birds, insects, or plants, with the 

 extremes of the thermometer in early spring; but the bulk 

 of his observations were never recorded, and most of his 

 knowledge has perished with him. 



In 1866 he sustained what to him was a heavy pecuniary 

 loss; and, as he afterwards confessed, he lacked the courage 

 to look his difficulties boldly in the face, but lived on as 

 before, buoyed up by hope that all would come right in the 

 end. But in 1870 a crisis came. " Everything has gone 

 against me the last four years (he writes), and I see no 

 prospect of brighter times. I must part with everything, and 

 1 am quite broken-hearted." The sale of everything he 

 possessed would not produce sufficient to pay his debts. 

 Ruin stared him in the face : he became melancholy, 

 bewildered, at times delirious ; and his mind having for a 

 time lost its balance he was placed in a Retreat, near York, 

 where he passed three months in the beginning of 1871, until 

 under gentle medical care his mental equilibrium was restored. 



Very touching are his letters written from the Retreat : — " I 

 do feel so dull and lonely here, and there is no bright prospect 



