176 



CHAPTER YIII. 



1881-1890. 



Changes in the personnel were few in this decade. The most 

 important was the appointment, in January, 1884, of Mr. F. E. 

 Beddard as Prosector, that office having become vacant by the 

 death of W. A. Forbes in the preceding year. There is no 

 reference to this event in the published Report, for which 

 reason part of the obituary notice in the Ibis (1883, pp. 

 384-392) may be quoted: 



In July, 1882, he left England on what promised to be a splendid 

 opportunity of visiting the Eastern tropics with every advantage and 

 without much risk. Detained at Shonga (a station some 400 miles up the 

 Niger below Rebba) by the breaking down of his communications, Mr. 

 Forbes fell a victim to dysentery on January 14 last, thus adding 

 another name to the martyrs of science* in that 

 deservedly dreaded climate. 



In 1889 Mr. Benjamin Misselbrook, who had been for more 

 than sixty years in the service of the Society, and for about a 

 third of that time had filled the responsible post of head-keeper, 

 retired on pension. Mr. Arthur Thomson, the son of a former 

 head-keeper, was appointed to succeed him. 



Just as the Society, in 1849, opened the first reptile house 

 in connection with a zoological garden, and in 1853 the first 

 aquarium, so now, in 1881, the first systematic attempt was 

 made to form a collection of living insects for exhibition. The 

 iron-and-glass building used as an insect house was removed to 

 its present position from the South Garden, where it had formed 

 part of the refreshment-room. The cases were arranged on 

 stands round the building, and on tables in the centre, and the 

 general plan with regard to their disposition was much the same 

 as it is now. The specimens were well labelled, and preserved 



*The Continental practice of recording on simple memorial tablets, in museums 

 and similar institutions, the names of officers -who have " died on the field of 

 honour in the cause of science " is worthy of imitation in this country. The 

 formula quoted is that used in the Museums in the Jar din des Plantes. 



