OBITUARY. 43 



holly blooms. P. obscurella, like most of its leaf-mining 

 congeners, is preyed upon by two parasites, a Braconid and 

 a Chalcid, unless the latter be a parasite of the second 

 degree. — Edward A. Fitch; xMaldon, Essex, December 28, 

 1877. 



OBITUARY. 



Mr. Thomas Vernon Wollaston, M.A., F.L.S. — The 

 appearance of 'Coleoptera Sanctae-Helenae,' by Mr. Wollaston, 

 the last of the many valuable contribulionsof its talented author 

 to entomological science, has been sadly followed by intelli- 

 gence of his decease. For the last thirty years he had suffered 

 from vveakness of the lungs, accompanied by the occasional 

 rupture of the vessels, througli which, on the 4lh of January 

 last, he passed from a life spent in valuable labour up to its 

 latest moments. Mr. T. Vernon Wollaston, of the old family 

 of Wollaston, of Shenton, Leicestershire, was the tenth son 

 and fifteenth child of the Rev. Henry John Wollaston, rector 

 of Scotter, Lincolnshire. He was born on March 9th, 182'2, 

 and educated at the Grammar School, Bury St. Edmund's, 

 and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he continued to reside 

 some time after taking his degree. With an inherited love for 

 Natural History in his blood — he was great, great-grandson 

 of Dr. Wollaston, the author of the 'Religion of Nature' 

 (1720), and was related to William Hyde Wollaston, M.D., 

 and vice-president of the Royal Society — it soon displayed 

 itself in his fondness for collecting Lepidopiera when at 

 school ; and Mr. Wollaston soon became well known as a 

 valued naturalist, and especially for his researches into the 

 Coleoptera of the Madeiran, Canarian, and Cape Verde 

 Archipelagos (which he personally explored, now many years 

 ago, on a yacht voyage, in the companionship of his friend 

 Mr. Gray), and also his investigations of their land-shells, as 

 recorded in the ' Testacea Allantica,' still on the verge of 

 publication at the time of the author's decease. Mr. 

 WoUaston's valuable writings on the enumeration, descrip- 

 tion, and critical examination of the coleopterous fauna 

 of these islands, and esj)ecially his account of the insects of 

 the islands of the Madeiran group, embodying in his own 

 clear and highly-finished style the results of his personal 

 researches, are well known to entomologists, — in the 'Insecta 

 Maderensia,' published in 1854; the Catalogue of his own 



