APPENDIX. 



[CHAPTER xv. OF MB. FREEMAN'S LIFE OF MR. KIRBY.] 



IT is with a mournful pleasure I contribute to my friend Mr. Freeman's 

 Life of Mr. Kirby a slight sketch of the history of our friendship of 

 nearly half a century, and of the origin and progress of the " Introduction 

 to Entomolgy," the source of so much interest and delight to us both ; 

 partly from recollection, but chiefly from Mr. Kirby's letters to me 

 during that time, and from mine to him.* 



Our acquaintance began in this way. Chancing, one evening, in 

 August 1805, when walking on the Hurnber bank, to meet my friend 

 George Rodwell, Esq., then a resident at Hull, he told me he was about 

 to visit Barham in a few days, and said if I had any insects to send to 

 Mr. Kirby he should be happy to convey them. This offer I gladly 



* These letters, with which Mr. Freeman has furnished me, are between four and 

 five hundred in number ; and those from Mr. Kirby, which I have preserved with as 

 much care as he had mine, are nearly as many. About half of the two series of 

 letters refer almost wholly to entomology and our book, but a great part of the re- 

 mainder, exchanged during my eight years' travels and residence on the Continent, 

 and after my return to England, are more occupied with accounts of our tours, &c., 

 and of domestic matters. Our entomological letters, in those days of dear postage, 

 were mostly written on sheets of large folio paper, so closely, that each would equal 

 a printed sheet of sixteen pages of ordinary type. These we called our " first- rates," 

 or sometimes " seventy-fours," the few on ordinary-sized paper being " frigates ; " 

 but one I find from Mr. Kirby, which he calls the "Royal Harry," written 

 on a sheet nearly the size of a "Times" supplement, and closely filled on three 

 pages, and which he begins and concludes thus : " Barham, March 23. 1816. My 

 Dear Friend, This doubtless will be the greatest rarity in the epistolary way that 

 you ever received. I hope it will long be kept among your /cei/unjAia, and be shown, 

 not as a black, but as a black and white swan, which since the discovery of the 

 former in N. S. W., must be held as the true rara avis. . . . And now, having 

 manned this Royal Ifai-ry with as large a complement of men as I could muster, I 

 shall launch her. I question whether ever one of equal tonnage before crossed the 

 Humber." With the love of order which Mr. Kirby's study of natural history had 

 so deeply implanted in him, all my letters are folded across the sheet, so as to be of 

 the same breadth of about two inches, and have an index on the back of each, re- 

 ferring to the various subjects (often 15 to 20) of the letter, which he marked in it 

 by large figures in brackets, so as readily to catch the eye ; and they were then 

 docketed with red tape into a packet for each year. 



