( clxvi ) 



pleasant young Assistant-Secretary had already achieved a 

 conspicuous place among scientific workers ; that he had not 

 only won the highest Honours that Oxford can bestow on a 

 Science-student, but shown himself worthy of them by dis- 

 tinguished work in original research at Naples ; and that he 

 was organising a new and important branch of nature-study 

 at Oxford, after personal investigation of its latest develop- 

 ments in America. All this, and much more, I have now 

 learnt from a profoundly interesting account of his career and 

 character — which, I hope, will be read as widely as it deserves 

 to be — in the Entomologist'' s Record of October last. 



The picture there given could only be marred, if 1 attempted 



to retouch it : and it is best that such lives should be 



chronicled by those who have been in closest contact with 



them. I will say merely that, as I read, I was reminded of 



certain lives, pronounced (it is said) by the wisest of the 



Greeks to have been entirely happy, yet not till they had been 



made perfect by a noble death. (tcXcvt^ tov piov Aa/ATrpoTarr; 



... TO avOpMTTio Tv^itv apicTTOv ccTTt.— Hsrod., Hist. i. 30-31.) 



William Forsell Kieby was born in 1844, and passed 



away on November 20th last. Having completed thirty 



years of conscientious and industrious service in the Insect 



Room of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 



he retired, according to its Regulations, in 1907. Previously, 



for twelve years, he had occupied a similar post in Dublin. 



He published at intervals (commencing so long ago as 1863 



with a well-known and useful Manual of European Butterflies), 



a long succession of careful works on Insects of almost every 



Order, some of which arose directly out of his departmental 



duties, while others seem to have been labours of love. I am 



incompetent, even if I thought this a fitting occasion, to 



discuss these publications in detail. The List of the British 



Museum Tenthredinidae is almost the only one which bears 



(and that only to a limited extent) on my own particular 



studies. From a competent judge I hear that the Revision of 



the Libelhdina (Odonata) was probably the best of Kirby's 



entomological works. The latest of them, I believe, was a 



Synonymic Catalogue of the Orthoptera. 



Most of the above details, and also a remarkable notice of 



