October 14, 1922] 



NA TURE 



521 



important to the human race, and there is no greater 

 danger at present than the alienation of the peoples of 

 Asia and the Near East. Much of the ill-feeling en- 

 gendered in India, Egypt, and elsewhere is the product 

 of misunderstandings, due to a lack of appreciation on 



both sides of the opinions ana views of the other party, 

 and there seems to be no better method of removing 

 such misunderstandings than a sympathetic stud}- of 

 one another's culture ; to this end anthropology offers 

 the most hopeful approach. 



Obituary. 



Dr. David Sharp. F.R.S. 



DR. DAVID SHARP, whose name, it has been well 

 said, is a household word wherever the science 

 of entomology is pursued, died on August 27 at his 

 home at Brockenhurst. His love of entomology, 

 the great and continuing enthusiasm of his life, dated 

 from his early childhood. Born in 1840 at Towcester, 

 Northamptonshire, his early years were passed at 

 Whittlebury, Northants, and at Stony Stratford. His 

 parents later moved to London, and it was at Loudoun 

 Road, St. John's Wood, that Herbert Spencer was an 

 inmate of Sharp's father's house, as Spencer himself 

 has related in his autobiography. Sharp himself said 

 that his youthful intimacy with Spencer had influenced 

 him considerably, and throughout his life he retained 

 in Spencer's work an interest which found expression in 

 the publication in 1904 of an article on " the place of 

 Herbert Spencer in biology." 



Sharp was destined by his father for a business 

 career, but, finding this uncongenial, he studied 

 medicine in London and afterwards at Edinburgh 

 University, where he graduated in 1866 with the degrees 

 M.B. and CM. Specialising in the treatment of mental 

 illnesses, he resided for some years at Thornhill in 

 Dumfriesshire. He left Scotland in 1884 and lived at 

 Shirley Warren, Southampton, and afterwards at 

 Wilmington, near Dartford, Kent. Early in 1890 he 

 was appointed curator of the insect collections of the 

 University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, a post 

 which he resigned early in 1909. He then retired to 

 Brockenhurst, where he passed the rest of his days. 



Must of his multitudinous writings are system- 

 atic works on the Coleoptera, to which he devoted the 

 greater part of his life, but many deal with other insects 

 or with life-histories, or have a still wider bearing, for 

 his learning extended to a wonderful degree over the 

 whole field of entomology. He had an unrivalled 

 knowledge of the British Coleoptera, and already in 

 1869 had published a monograph of nearly 200 pages 

 on the obscure genus Homalota. His list of the 

 Coleoptera of Scotland appeared in the early volumes 

 of the Scottish Naturalist, and he published two cata- 

 logues of the Coleopterous fauna of Britain, the second 

 in collaboration with Canon W. W. Fowler. His 

 numerous other studies of British beetles form a series 

 of papers continuing to the last years of his life. 



Sharp's biggest works on foreign Coleoptera are the 

 monograph of water-beetles (Dytiscidae) published by 

 the Royal Dublin Society in 1882, and his contributions 

 to the " Biologia Centrali- Americana." In the latter 

 he wrote the whole of the volume on Adephaga and 

 Staphylinidae, more than 800 pages, the greater part of 

 the volume on Clavicorns. and three other important 

 sections, lie also published in 1876 a paper of nearly 

 400 pages on the Staphylinidae of the Amazons. On I 



NO. 2763, VUL. I io] 



Xew Zealand beetles, a fauna in which lie was specially 

 interested, he produced a long series of memoirs. One 

 can barelv allude to his papers on the beetles of Japan, 

 an important series, and to others on those of Ceylon, 

 Southern India, the White Nile, etc., with many more, 

 far too numerous to mention. Systematists, knowing 

 the work required for the prod mt inn of a single careful 

 description, will appreciate the immense amount of toil 

 needed to achieve these results. Special mention must 

 be made of Sharp's work on the faunas of islands. A 

 series of earlier papers on Hawaiian beetles was but 

 the prelude to his labours as secretary of the committee 

 appointed in 1890 to investigate that fauna, and as 

 editor of the three large volumes of the " Fauna 

 Hawaiiensis." of which he himself wrote several con- 

 siderable parts. He was moreover a member of the 

 committee appointed in 1888 to examine the flora and 

 fauna of the West Indies. 



Of his more general writings undoubtedly the best 

 known are the two volumes on insects in the " Cam- 

 bridge Natural History," published in 1895 and 

 1899 respectively, which at once became standard 

 works. His memoir (1912) written in collaboration 

 with Mr. F. Muir on " the comparative anatomy of the 

 male genital tube in Coleoptera " is a masterly treatise, 

 mi the production of which the breadth of his learning 

 was brought to bear. In 1873 appeared his pamphlet 

 on " the object and method of zoological nomenclature," 

 in which he elaborated the view that nomenclature 

 requires, for the maintenance of continuity of know- 

 ledge, fixed names for the species of animals, while 

 changing ideas as to classification need shifting names 

 for their expression. He advocated that the two 

 names, generic and trivial, originally given to an animal 

 should always be preserved intact, even though it may 

 subsequently be placed in several different genera at 

 different periods. He held also that the analytic 

 system of Linnaeus, in which species are treated as 

 fractions of genera, broke down almost at once, and 

 that only by a synthetic system could progress be made ; 

 that species must first be rightly understood, and then 

 grouped into genera. These ideas he carried into 

 practice in his monograph of the water-beetles, but in 

 his later works he did not adhere strictly to the system 

 of naming there used. In the introduction to that 

 monograph he also expressed some of his views on the 

 origin of species, an example of his cautiousness with 

 regard to accepted ideas. He also discussed the phyto- 

 geny of insects in the proceedings of the Congress of 

 Zoologv held at Cambridge in 1898; and the senses, 

 especially the sight, of insects in Ins retiring presi- 

 dential address to the Entomological Society (1888). 

 To him are due the articles on " Termites " and 

 ■■ Insects " in the volumes of the " Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica " issued in 1902, as is also (in part) that on 

 " Hexapoda " in the later edition (1910). 



