Ixiv 



For nearly a quarter of a century Mr. Adam White was one 

 of our members, and a constant attendant at our gatherings 

 in Bond Street and Bedford Row. A native of Edinburgh, 

 he came to London as a lad, and when eighteen years of age was 

 attached to the Zoological Department of the British Museum, 

 where he remained until 18G3, when mental incapacity compelled 

 his retirement. He lived in seclusion until the 4th January, 

 1879, when he died at Glasgow at the age of sixt3'-two. He was 

 the author of papers on all branches of Entomology; the Royal 

 Society's Catalogue contains the titles of fifty-eight articles 

 written by him between 1839 and 1861 ; he compiled several 

 of the British Museum Catalogues, and all who five-and-twenty 

 years ago had occasion to consult the national collection will 

 remember his readiness to assist, and the broad Scotch accent 

 with which his words of sound advice were delivered. 



But if the Museum was prematurely deprived of a faithful 

 servant in Adam White, it has sustained a still greater loss in 

 Mr. Frederick Smith. Of Yorkshire parents and (though born 

 in London) educated at Leeds, wdien his school-days were over 

 Frederick Smith was apprenticed to an engraver in Soho Square, 

 who had lodging with him a nephew, William Edward Shuckard. 

 The lads became warm friends, but it was not until several years 

 afterwards that Shuckard, having returned to his native town of 

 Brighton, was led by mere accident to observe the habits of some 

 bees burrowing on the Sussex downs ; he obtained a copy of 

 Kirby's ' Monographia Apum Angliae,' and from that time his 

 whole energies were devoted to Hymenoptera. The future author 

 of the ' Essay on the Indigenous Fossorial Hymenoptera of Great 

 Britain ' soon won over his friend to the same pursuit, and 

 while still a young man Frederick Smith had become an ardent 

 collector of bees and ants, and a close observer of their habits. 

 He assisted John Curtis in some of the later plates of the 

 ' British Entomology.' On the death of Mr. Bainbridge, in 

 1841, he was appointed Curator of the Collections and Library 

 of this Society, and for nine years he was to be found every 

 Monday afternoon at the Society's Rooms in New Bond Street. 

 Having been engaged by Dr. Gray to arrange the Hymenoptera 

 in the British Museum, he was emploj^ed upon this work when 

 a vacancy in the Zoological Department was created by the death 

 of Edward Doubleday, in December, 1849, Frederick Smith 



