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 NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Memoir of the late Mr. G. R. Waterhouse. — A well-known name 

 has been removed from the roll of living naturalists by the recent death of 

 Mr. George Robert Waterhouse. Born at Somers Town on March 6th, 

 1810, he commenced his career as an architect, for which profession he 

 had been educated ; devoting his spare time to the study of Natural History, 

 some articles in the 'Penny Cyclopaedia' on Fishes and Insects being 

 among his earliest writings. In 1833 the Entomological Society of London 

 was founded, with Mr. Waterhouse as its first Curator, and with his decease 

 that Society loses the last of those who were present at its first meeting. 

 In 1835 he accepted the appointment of Curator to the Museum of the 

 Royal Institute at Liverpool, which appointment he in little more than a 

 year exchanged for the Curatorship to the Zoological Society of London. 

 By the spring of the following year he had prepared a Catalogue of the 

 Mammals in the Museum. This, however, was not published until 1838, 

 owing to his having introduced his own classification, which was strongly 

 opposed by some members of the Museum Committee, who clung to the 

 quinary system hitherto adopted in the arrangement. About this time he 

 wrote the volume on Marsupials in Sir W. Jardine's ' Naturalist's Library,' 

 and also the account of the Mammals collected by Darwin during the voyage 

 of H.M.S. 'Beagle,' as well as several papers on the Coleoptera collected 

 during the same voyage, including an account of the Coleoptera of the 

 Galapagos Islands. In November, 1843, he was appointed an Assistant in 

 the Geological Department in the British Museum; and in 1844 com- 

 menced his work the ' Natural History of Mammalia,' which occupied all 

 his available spare time until the completion of the second volume in 1848, 

 when, chiefly owing to the outbreak of the French Revolution, the publisher 

 was unable to continue the work. He was President of the Entomological 

 Society in 1849 and in 1850, and in the latter year he had the honour of 

 being elected an Honorary Fellow of the Zoological Society. In December, 

 1851, he succeeded Mr. Konig as Keeper of the Mineralogical Branch of 

 the Natural History Department in the British Museum, the geological 

 collections being at that time associated with the minerals. In 1855 he 

 prepared an article on the geographical distribution of the Rodentia for 

 Keith Johnston's ' Physical Atlas.' From 1858 until 1861 he was engaged 

 in the preparation of his ' Catalogue of British Coleoptera,' which gave such 

 an impetus to the study of this order of insects among English entomologists. 

 He was Vice-President of the Zoological Society in 1862-3. Besides the 

 works already alluded to, he was the author of some 120 articles in various 

 scientific journals. He was an excellent draughtsman, many of his papers 

 being illustrated by himself. Latterly he occupied himself with literary 



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