Xviil OBITUARY NOTICE OF THE 
Dr. Kidd, at Oxford, he studied geology and other branches of science with great ardour ; 
but the chief department of natural science to which his attention was directed was 
Entomology, in which branch, I may be permitted, without fear of contradiction, to say, 
he was the most highly qualified of his day. I state this upon no less an authority than 
that of the late Rev. W. Kirby, F.R.S., who gave to me personally this character of my 
friend. I could state many circumstances in proof of this assertion, but I will content 
myself with recording one which occurred to me at a time when I was paying much atten- 
tion to the processes of embalming adopted by the ancient Egyptians. In the examination 
of one of the mummies—that of which I have given a representation and particular descrip- 
tion in my work on this subject, published in 1884—I met with a quantity of débris that 
had simply the appearance of so much dirt mixed up with minute fragments of wings, 
legs, and other most diminutive parts of insects. I placed this mass before him in the 
presence, I recollect, also of our distinguished associate and vice-president, Sir J. Gardner 
Wilkinson, F.R.S.; and Mr. Hope immediately, without being apprized whence it had been 
obtained, pronounced the mass to be composed of insects whose natural food was animal 
matter, which he deduced from the apparent structure of the mandibles, and the forma- 
tion of the limbs. It was, in fact, the remains of insects which had been feeding upon the 
ancient Egyptian during his embalmment, and whose labours, together with their existence, 
had been brought to an end by the heat and medicaments employed in the conservation of 
the form of a human mummy. What Baron Cuvier and Professor Owen have been able to 
accomplish in the building up of a mammal, or a bird, or other animal from a single bone, 
Mr. Hope could do with a portion of wing, or limb or wing-case of an insect. I always 
derived much assistance from his vast entomological knowledge, on the occasion alluded 
to as well as in other objects of pursuit ; and in examining some heads brought for me from 
Egypt by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, we found contained within the skull of one, a number of 
insects in various stages of their existence, that had most probably first drawn their vitality 
within the head, where the ova had been, during the process of embalming, deposited, and 
the whole being afterwards bandaged up and all exit closed, there they were born, passed 
the short period of their life, exhibited themselves in different states of their progress, and 
became ultimately embalmed within the skull, which formed for them the cradle of their 
birth and the tomb for their dead remains. Mr. Hope was able to mark all the distin- 
guishing appearances of these insects; and as although the genera to which they belonged 
was known, yet not the precise species, we agreed to name them, from the peculiarity of 
their situation and circumstances, Necrobia mumiarum and Dermestes pollinctus. The 
present Professor of Zoology at Oxford, J. O. Westwood, Esq., made a drawing of these in 
their natural and magnified forms, their larva, ova, etc., which I now lay before you, and 
which I had engraved in the work before alluded to, and I offer it as an evidence of Mr. 
Hope’s intimate acquaintance with entomology. 
It is not remarkable that Mr. Hope should have been early admitted into the fellow- 
ship of the Linnzean Society and many other societies abroad established for the promotion 
