OBITUARY. 301 



Ireland. Examples which I have seen from Northern Europe are 

 much more highly coloured than British specimens." (Smith's 

 Cat. Brit. Foss. Hym., 1858, p. 221.) For economy, see 

 ' Zoologist,' X. 3699 ; 1852. In Dr. E. L. Ormerod's ' British 

 Social Wasps ' we read that this wasp is very local ; but that in 

 Gloucestershire, whence Dr. Ormerod wrote, this was the most 

 common species of tree-wasp : " In the hot summer of 1864, 

 when wasps were everywhere, V. hritannica built freely in the 

 neighbourhood of Brighton, to the astonishment of the natives of 

 these parts" (p. 217). For figures of its nest see plates v.(?), xi., 

 xiii. and xiv. Mr. Bridgman records it but once from Norfolk,— a 

 nest taken at Witton, in 1875, by the Eev. J. L. Brown (Trans. 

 Norf. and Norwich Nat. Soc. ii. 627) ; and the name does not 

 occur in the * Natural History of Hastings, St. Leonards, and 

 the Vicinity ' ; 1878. Mr. Howe's specimens are particularly 

 dark.— E. A. F.] 



OBITUARY. 



John Bickerton Blackburn. — Mr. J. B. Blackburn was 

 born in 1845 ; the son of Mr. Samuel Blackburn, a Liver- 

 pool merchant. He passed his boyhood in Cheshire, where, 

 in conjunction with his brother the Rev. Thomas Blackburn 

 and the Bev. Martin Geldart, he edited the ' Weekly Ento- 

 mologist," which for a time succeeded the ' Intelligencer,' 

 and occupied its place until 1864, when the 'Entomologist' 

 was again published in independence of the ' Zoologist.' Its 

 contemporary, the ' Entomologist's Monthly Magazine,' also 

 appeared about the same time. Soon after that period Mr. J. B. 

 Blackburn came up to London, and entered the Civil Service, in 

 the Secretary's office of the Inland Revenue, from which he was 

 obliged to retire from ill health about four years ago. During 

 the long holidays enjoyed by Civil servants he devoted his time 

 chiefly to collecting Lepidoptera, and made many visits to 

 Rannoch. It was there, on August 14th, 1867, when with the 

 Rev. Chas. J. Buckmaster, he made the remarkable capture of 

 three specimens of Sterrha sacraria. A few years ago he 

 matriculated at the London University, and eventually took the 

 degree of B.A. Over-work at this period probably brought on 

 the cerebral disorder which at last proved fatal. After spending 



