Wilts OUtnary. 325 



of other gifts, both to the Museum and Library ; amongst which may 

 be mentioned the portrait of W. Cunnington, F.S.A., by Samuel 

 Woodford, which he purchased from the Stourhead collection. Indeed 

 the Museum owes its very existence and present condition in no small 

 measure to him and to his brother Henry. It was the branch of the 

 Society's work which especially appealed to him. He was a Museum 

 Curator hy nature^ though he never filled the post, and to see the Society's 

 collections better housed and better displayed was one of the dearest 

 wishes of his life — a wish, alas ! which was never gratified. The ad- 

 mirable Catalogue of the Stourhead Collection, compiled when he was 

 82 years of age, is a monument at once of his love for the Museum, and 

 of the wonderful mental vigour which he retained to the very end of his 

 life. For though he had suffered from deafness for many years, his 

 mind remained almost as alert and capable of discussing the points of an 

 archaeological or geological problem as ever, and his handwriting changed 

 but little in the last twenty years of his life. 



One of the principal founders of the Wilts Archaeological Society in 

 1853, he never lost his interest in its welfare in the least degree, to the 

 very last. When, on leaving the county he resigned the position of 

 Hon. Gen. Secretary, which for some time he had held, his colleague, 

 the Rev. A. C. Smith, at the meeting of 1876, said of him: — "The loss 

 of Mr. Cunnington to the Society was no common loss, it was not too 

 much to say that he was one of the chief founders of the Society, and 

 but for his exertions the Society could, perhaps, never have come into 

 existence ; it was certainly the case that but for his energy and perse- 

 verance a Museum in connection with the Society would never have 

 been established at Devizes." This was written just thirty years ago, 

 and the Society in 'mourning his loss now, thinks of him not merely as 

 of one who did yeoman service among the veterans of the past generation 

 who laid the foundations of our work, more than half a century ago, 

 but of one who has never ceased to do that service up to the present 

 year, and whose latest gifts to our Library are noted in the present 

 number of the Magazine. 



Long obituary notices appeared in Wiltshire Advertiser and Devizes 

 Gazette, March 1st, 1906, and shorter notices in a great number of 

 London and local papers. 



A Bibliographical List of the Writings of W. 

 Cunnington, F.G.S. 



Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Wiltshire Archaeological 

 and Natural History Society at Devizes. Part I. The Stourhead 

 Collection. Devizes, 1896, 5^in. x 8^in., pp. iv. -\- 96. 



A Guide to the Stones of Stonehenge, Devizes, 1884. Pamphlet, with map, 

 8vo. 2 pp. 



Sarsens. Letters in Devizes Gazette, June, 1852, and June, 1853, reprinted 

 in part in Long's Ahury, 1858, pp. 27 — 31. 



Z 2 



