THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 261 
in Entomology was first exhibited at home, when, as a mere 
child, his attention was attracted by the butterflies, which, in 
the fruit season, came to feed on the ripe plums and apricots 
in his father’s gardens: Vanessa C-Album is especially men- 
tioned; and Limenitis Sibylla, another species no longer found 
in the vicinity of London, was then common at Southgate. 
In 1816 Mr. Walker’s parents were staying with their 
family at Geneva, then the centre of a literary céterie, in 
which they met, among other celebrities, Lord Byron, 
Madame de Stael, and the naturalists De Saussure and 
Vernet. They spent more than a year at Geneva and. Vevey, 
and in 1818 proceeded to Lucerne, from which place Francis, 
then a boy nine years of age, made the ascent of Mont 
Pilatus, in company with his elder brother Henry; their 
object, in addition to the ever-delightful one of mountain- 
climbing, being the collecting of butterflies. The family 
afterwards visited Neuwied, and returned to Arno’s Grove 
in 1820. 
In 1830 the two brothers, Henry and Francis, again 
visited the Continent, and now it was purely an entomological 
tour, the late Mr. Curtis, the well-known author of ‘ British 
Entomology, being their companion. This party collected 
most assiduously in the island of Jersey, and afterwards at 
Fontainebleau, Montpellier, Lyons, Nantes, Vaucluse, &c., 
the French Satyride, of which they formed very fine 
collections, being their principal object. 
Mr. Walker’s career as an author commenced in 1882. He 
contributed, to the first number of the ‘ Entomological Maga- 
zine, the introductory chapter of his ‘Monographia Chal 
ciditum,’ a work on the minute parasitic Hymenoptera,—a 
tribe of insects which he ever afterwards studied with the 
most assiduous attention, and one on which he immediately 
became the leading authority. He was then only twenty- 
‘three years of age; but his writings exhibited a depth of 
research and maturity of judgment “which have rarely been 
excelled, and which abundantly evince the time and talent 
he had ‘already devoted to these insects. It is worthy of 
notice that he now descended from the largest and most 
showy to the smallest and least conspicuous of insects, 
doubtless feeling that whereas among the magnificent butter- 
flies there was little opportunity for the discovery of novelties, 
among the Chalcidites everything was new,—everything 
