MEMOIR. 



Spruxg from a Derbyshire family of fair repute and respectable 

 autiquit}^^ John AYolley was boru at Matlock in tliat county on the 

 13tli of May, 1823, being the eldest son of the Rev. John Francis 

 Thomas Hurt (b. 1796, d. 1877) and Mary his wife, eldest daughter 

 of Adam Wolley, Esq., of that place, a geutleman well known as a 

 local historian and the donor to the British Museum of a valuable 

 collection of Manuscripts. At the decease of his father-in-law, in 

 1827, Mr. Hurt assumed the surname and arms of Wolley, and 

 dropped the use of his second and third Christian names. His 

 mother was the only daughter of the celebrated Sir Richard Ark- 

 vvright, so that the subject of this memoir was the great-grandson of 

 that remarkable man *. 



At an early age John Wolley, the younger, was sent to a 

 preparatory school at Southwell, kept by Mr. Fletcher, which in 

 1836 he quitted for Eton, where he remained for the next six years, 

 leaving it at the beginning of the summer holidays in 1812. A love 

 of Nature's works strongly shewed itself even in the days of his child- 

 hood, and, encouraged by his father, was shared by his two younger 

 brothers George and Charles, schoolfellows with him at Southwell, 

 though for a long while plants and insects occupied the attention of 

 all three fully as much as the higher classes of creation which at a 

 later period became the main objects of interest to him. The boys 

 had access to a considerable number of standard works on natural 

 history and began collections of various kinds, which were eventually 

 housed in a disused stable, dignified by the name of " Museum,'' in the 



* Further particulars of tlie families of Arkwriglit, Iliiit, and Wollov will be 

 found ill Bui-ke's 'History of the Landed Gentry.' 



