he writes : c Without a doubt his chief work is that pub- 

 lished by the Ray Society, 1861-4. This appeared under 

 circumstances of great disadvantage ; not only had the 

 MS. been in the hands of the Society for ten years before 

 it was published, but just at a most critical point the 

 serious and prolonged illness of Mr. Tuffen West, the 

 artist engaged upon the plates, threw the whole into 

 a confusion, in its extrication from which it was my own 

 happiness and privilege to be able to lend a hand. . . . 

 It happened to myself to be staying with him in 1860, 

 just after the appearance of Mr. Darwin's work on 

 The Origin of Species, many points in which became the 

 subject of long and frequent discussions between us/ 

 Blackwall's British and Irish Spiders was a landmark in 

 the study of the subject, and my father's own terminology 

 and descriptive methods were for many years based on 

 those of Blackwall, though he soon employed a rather less 

 diffuse style in description, and was always revising his 

 classification of species in accordance with newer know- 

 ledge. After BlackwalPs death, his collection came into 

 my father's possession ; and though Blackwall was not 

 a collector in the ordinary sense, and preserved few 

 specimens, the series of types from which the drawings 

 and descriptions of British and Irish Spiders were made 

 is of great importance, and the possession of it enabled 

 my father to make many important verifications and 

 corrections as regards the synonymy of species. 



My father's diaries for i8<fa and 1863 are missing; 



