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THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 93 
correspondence and exchange, to correspond directly with 
Mr. Mann, without the intervention or assistance of any third 
person.—Hdward Newman. | 
Death of Dr. Gray.—John Edward Gray, for fifty years 
an active officer of the Zoological Department of the British 
Museum, from which Institution he retired only in last 
December, succumbed to the inclemency of an English spring 
on Sunday the 7th of the present month (March) having just 
completed his seventy-fifth year. He was the son of Samuel 
Frederick Gray, who acquired considerable notoriety as a 
botanist from his having been the first to introduce Jussieu’s 
classification of plants into this country, in a work intituled 
“The Natural Arrangement of British Plants,’ Dr. Gray 
himself strongly advocating the new system. ‘The reception 
of the work was not altogether favourable, for at that time 
there was a very prevalent feeling, especially in the Linnean 
Society, against the introduction into the Science of Botany 
of any other than the sexual and numerical classification 
promulgated by Linneus. It was probably under these 
circumstances that Dr. Gray turned his attention more 
exclusively to Zoology, and in 1824, through the influence 
of the late John George Children, he was appointed an 
assistant in the Zoological Department of the British Museum ; 
and in 1840, on the rétirement of Mr. Children, he succeeded 
to the post of Keeper of the Zoological collection to that 
establishment. 
Few naturalists now living will recollect the meagre state of 
this collection when Dr. Gray’s services were first acquired ; 
but those who, like myself, can look thus far back into the 
past, will bear willing testimony to the vast improvements 
which took place under his auspices: his labours were 
energetic and unremitting, and he eventually succeeded 
in obtaining for our national collection a reputation second 
to none in Europe. And here it must be observed that this 
eminent success is not to be attributed solely to Dr. Gray’s 
incessant zeal in advocating the purchase by the trustees of 
collections made by our fellow-countrymen and othersin all parts 
of the world: seeing that whenever he experienced a difficulty 
in obtaining the necessary supplies from Parliamentary grants, 
