MR. JAMES WM. BOULT,* 



Stonemason and Entomologist. 



Plate XXIII. 



By J. Fraser Robinson. 



ON the 25th day of May, 1905, a meeting of the Hull 

 Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club was held, which 

 proved of unusual interest ; for exactly twenty-five 

 years before, to the very date, the original society, The Hull 

 Field Naturalists' Society, held its first meeting. (This 

 subsequently amalgamated with the Hull Scientific Club, 

 and our present title indicates the fact.) Furthermore, the 

 founder of the first-named organisation was present in the 

 person of Mr. James W. Boult. So the proceedings took a 

 somewhat reminiscent form, the original minute books being 

 produced, and extracts read therefrom ; whilst Mr. Boult 

 was much felicited upon his silver wedding to the fair maid 

 Scientia Naturae. In reply to the many expressions of con- 

 gratulation, our friend, who holds the record for regular 

 attendance during the quarter of a century of the Club's 

 existence, became briefly autobiographical, and from the 

 notes then made, together with interviews accorded during a 

 friendship extending over the greater part of the past twenty 

 years, the following sketch has been prepared and will not 

 fail, we believe, to be of some interest to our members. 



Mr. J. W. Boult is a native of the East Riding of York- 

 shire, having first breathed its pure air on 13th March, 1847, 

 at the little old-world village of North Frodingham, where 

 his father, who is still living, was sometime tailor. We are 

 not informed that any portents or omens attached to his birth, 

 but it seems a happy circumstance that one who should in 

 later years give all his leisure, and even much of his resting 

 time to the study of the insects and other lowly animals, as 

 well as the wild plants of the county, should himself be native 

 thereof, and so "to the manner born. " It is not always thus — 



* The above notes were prepared and printed in pamphlet form and 

 distributed amongst Mr. Boult's friends and fellow workers, in recogni- 

 tion of his many years' devoted service to the club. It was thought 

 advisable, however, to have a permanent record for the benefit of future 

 members of the club, consequently they have been bound up in these 



Transactions. — [Ed. ]. 



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