August 1S91.J 



PSYCHE. 



131 



EDWARD BURGESS. 



The death of Mr. Edward Burgess of 

 Boston on July 12 at the a^e of 43 removed 

 one of the few persons in America who have 

 made important contributions to insect 

 anatomy. 



His work was not voluminous but it was 

 very careful and exact. As president of this 

 Club he gave in 1880 an excellent review of 

 the then recent literature in insect anatomy 

 and physiology. His own most important 

 and extensive paper was on the anatomy of 

 the milk weed butterfly, but he worked out in 

 more or less detail the anatomy of the per- 

 fect stage in Anabrus and Aletia and studied 

 minutely the male abdominal appendages of 

 butterflies, the structure of the head of 

 Psocidae, the mouth parts of the larva of 

 Dytiscus and the varied course of the aorta 

 in Lepidoptera. He was also the first to 

 show the precise structure and working of 

 the apparatus for feeding in the imago of 

 Lepidoptera. 



A large part of his work was in aid of ihe 

 researches of others, in which he was gener- 

 ous almost to a fault, and his unselfish devo- 

 tion to his duties for sixteen years as secre- 

 tary of the Boston society of natural history, 

 in whose publications most of his papers 

 were issued, brought the office to a high 

 state of efficiency — a devotion further sig- 

 nalized in his will, in which he made the 

 society his contingent residuary legatee. 

 Besides, although he published but a single 

 short paper on Diptera, his knowledge of 

 this group, in which he lendered large ser- 

 vice to others, was unsurpassed among our 

 countrymen. 



To entomology, which he had cultivated 

 with such signal success, Mr. Burgess, it is 

 true, died several years ago when he parted 

 from his collection and library and turned his 

 attention exclusively to naval architecture in 

 which he had been interested from boyhood 

 and which offered far more promise of finan- 

 cial returns, then first absolutely necessary 



for him to consider. His world-known suc- 

 cess in his new field (for he fairly leaped 

 into fame) it is not the place here to con- 

 sider, but, clearly the greatest genius our 

 country has ever produced in this branch of 

 science, his naturalist friends without excep- 

 tion will agree that in losing him from their 

 immediate ranks Science at large has been 

 the gainer; they were indeed eager to ap- 

 plaud his success, his old scientific friends 

 being, we beliqve, the very first to give him 

 a tangible proof of their pride in his fellow- 

 ship — a pride all the greater for the almost 

 painful modesty with which he received 

 every mark of his growing fame. Selfishness 

 could not live in his sight. When the city 

 of Boston gave him a public reception, his 

 shrinking boyish figure as he rose to return 

 his thanks, in which he tried to turn public 

 attention rather to the one whose means, 

 whose confidence and whose sympathy had 

 rendered the realization of his scientific 

 genius practically possible, will not soon be 

 forgotten by those who witnessed it. But 

 the gentleness and sincerity of his charac- 

 ter, the refinement of his life and manners, 

 his truthfulness and loyalty, and all those 

 other delicate traits which revealed his heart 

 and rendered him so dear to his intimate 

 friends will remain to them a source of 

 perennial inspiration. 



THE LONDON INSECTARY. 



The following extract from a recent num- 

 ber of Nature shows that America is largely 

 drawn upon for interesting insects in the 

 display at the insect-house of the Zoological 

 Society of London, and yet no special men- 

 tion is made of our large and striking Bom- 

 bycidae. It suggests that when the contem- 

 plated natural history gardens in Boston are 

 fairly established, we can easily rival any 

 exhibitions of this nature now existing. 



'•The insect-house in the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens is now in excellent order, 



