216 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



years, the greater part of his time being spent in the brass foundry, 

 where he attained to a position of some distinction, and from whicli 

 he retired in 1899. Entomology seems to have had a fascination for 

 him from his earhest youth, first as a collector of Lepidoptera, but 

 later the Coleoptera, Hemiptera and Orthoptera claimed the larger 

 part of his attention, and of all these orders he amassed good repre- 

 sentative collections, and only last year he presented his collection of 

 Homoptera to the Natural History Museum. He was a good field 

 naturalist, and in the days when Lee and Kidbrook were country 

 places, these, with Greenwich Park, were among his, in the truest 

 sense of the words, happy hunting-grounds. Of late, with more 

 time at his disposal, it was his custom to spend a few weeks each 

 year in such well-known localities as the New Forest, Wicken Fen, 

 and so forth, and on these excursions he turned up many good and 

 interesting species. 



He was a man who wrote little, but in the earlier volumes of this 

 magazine are a few notes from his pen, in one of which he records 

 the capture of Sphinx convolvuU in Greenwich Park, and in another 

 sets at rest the then moot point as to the identity of Leptogramma 

 scabrana and L. boscana. He also wrote the articles on the Hemip- 

 tera-heteroptera and Hemiptera-homoptera for the ' Survey and 

 Eecord of Woolwich and West Kent,' published in 1909, the appear- 

 ance of the letters " W.W." as the authority for the record of the 

 greater number of the species enumerated testifying to the assiduity 

 of his work in these orders in the district under review. He was 

 one of the founders of the South London Entomological Society, 

 served on its first council, and was appointed its first Curator, an 

 office that he held continuously until his death, thus covering a period 

 of some forty-eight years. From small beginnings the collections 

 under his care have grown to practically complete typical collections 

 of all orders of insects, and it was he alone who knew how largely he 

 had contributed to their completeness, for he appeared to have no 

 greater pleasure than to fill in some gap that might add to their 

 usefulness. A man of singularly equable and happy temperament, 

 he will be missed by a large circle of friends, but perhaps by none so 

 much as the members of the South London Society, where, meeting 

 after meeting, with hardly a break, he was in attendance to assist the 

 members in naming any doubtful specimens and to encourage them 

 with his many reminiscences. Thus was he engaged even at the last 

 meeting that he attended — little more than a week before his death. 

 His end came as he could have wished. He had retired, as was his 

 custom, to his own room to amuse liimself with his books and collec- 

 tions, and on being called to the evening meal made no response. It 

 was then found that he had passed peacefully away surrounded by 

 the objects that in life he had loved so well. He was interred at 

 Shooter's Hill Cemetery, Blackheath, with his wife, who had some 

 years pre-deceased him. He leaves two sons and two daughters. 



E. A. 



