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EDWARD SAUNDERS, F.R.S. 



(1849 — 1910). 



We much regret to record the death of Mr. Edward Saunders, 

 F.R.S., which took place recently in his sixty-second year. 

 A notice appears in the ' Entomologists' Monthly Magazine,' 

 of which he was an Editor, from which we learn that Edward 

 Saunders " devoted himself first to the Coleoptera, but acquired 

 also considerable familiarity with entomology in general, and 

 with several other of the ' systematic ' sciences, such as botany 

 and conchology. At the age of sixteen he published a paper in 

 the first volume of the ' Entomologist's Monthly Magazme ' on 

 ' Coleoptera at Lowestoft,' and was afterwards for some years 

 mainly occupied in studying the Buprestidae of the world. 

 .' succession of notes, descriptions, revisions of particular 

 collections, groups, etc., bearing on this subject was communi- 

 cated by him to the ' Transactions of the Entomological Society' 

 from 1866 to i86g. In 1870 he published a ' Catalogue of the 

 Species contained in the Genus Bnprestis Linn.,' and in 1871 

 his ' Catalogus Bnprestidarum Synonymicus et Systematicus,' 

 a work the importance of which was immediately recognised. 



His grand work ' Hymenoptera-Aculeata of the British 

 Isles ' (1896) is one of the few without which no serious hy- 

 menopterist thinks his working library complete. Saunders 

 became a Fellow of the Entomological Society in 1865, served 

 as Treasurer from 1880 to 1890, and was a Vice-President in no 

 fewer than five sessions, viz., in 1874, 1899, 1901, 1906 and 1907. 



Though he never actually held the Presidency, it is scarcely 

 a secret that he would more than once have been elected to it 

 unanimously if he could have been pursuaded to accept a post, 

 the duties of which he felt unequal (physically) to discharge so 

 completely as he would have wished. 



He entered the Linnean Society in 1869, and about that time 

 contributed at least three papers to its journal. Long after, 

 in 1890, he published in the same journal an exceedingly careful 

 and interesting paper on the tongues, etc., of bees, with beauti- 

 ful illustrations, drawn by his brother, Mr G. S. Saunders, 

 from microscopic preparations made by Mr. Enock. 



His election in 1902 to the honour of Fellowship in the Royal 

 Society was not only highly gratifying to himself and his per- 

 sonal friends, but to all who saw in it a recognition of systematic 

 entomology, treated as Saunders treated it, as no mere idle 

 dilettantism, but a genuine branch of science." 



Naturalist, 



