62 [JuLy 
OBITUARIES 
AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON FRANKS 
Born 1826. Diep May 21, 1897 
Sir AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON FRANKS, K.C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S., Pres. S.A., 
F.G.S., Trustee of the British Museum, late keeper of British and 
Mediaeval Antiquities and of Ethnography at the British Museum, 
was born at Geneva in 1826, and educated at Eton and Trinity 
College, Cambridge, taking his M.A. degree in 1852. His taste for 
the beautiful in works of art, and his appreciation of the niceties, 
peculharities, and fantasies of artists, whether the results were 
produced with the inspiration of genius, or by handicraft and labour, 
led him to collect largely in each department of artistic work, and 
fortunately his.ample means enabled him to do so. With munificent 
liberality he gave many valuable collections to the National Museum 
at Bloomsbury. It was thus that, not only theoretically, but practi- 
cally and personally, he was acquainted with the extensive and many- 
sided groups of antiquities and ethnographic exhibits under his 
keepership. He was not a mere official custodian, but a cultured 
connoisseur, and a high-class authority on all points connected with 
the scientific and historical aspects of the materials or collections in 
his charge. Necessarily his study of medieval things kept him in 
touch with those of prehistoric age in the British Collection which 
was under his care; and, indeed, of these there are many objects of 
human workmanship dating from extremely early times. Con- 
temporary with these were similar productions in European and 
other countries. These are largely represented in the British Museum 
by the “ Christy Collection,” which Sir Wollaston Franks augmented 
by successive gifts of similar well-sorted examples from many localities. 
Indeed, this notable department in the museum well deserves now 
to be called the “ Christy-Franks Collection.” 
In March 1864, Mr Henry Christy invited a party of his friends, 
interested as antiquaries and geologists, to examine some of the bone- 
caves on the Vezere, Dordogne district, in the south of France, which, 
with his friend Edouard Lartet, he had for some time been investi- 
gating with great care, and at considerable expense. The party 
comprised Mr W. J. Hamilton (President of the Geological Society), 
Prof. Rupert Jones (Assistant Secretary of the Geological 
Society), Capt. (since Sir) Douglas Galton, Mr (since Sir) John 
Lubbock, Mr (since Sir) John Evans, and Mr (since Sir) A. W. 
Franks.* Not only had the last-named already interested himself in 
Henry Christy’s researches in the ethnographic relationship of various 
textile fabrics, which had led him to Mexico, and in that country to 
the observation of stone implements; but A. W. Franks heartily 
joined Christy in the study of stone implements, and of those who 
* Quart. Journ. Geol, Soc., vol. xx., 1864, p. 444; and ‘‘Reliquiae Aquitanicae,” 
Part xii., 1873, p. 161. 
