79 



valued and whose faces it has been a pleasure to see, one 

 by one go to swell the great majority. The past year has 

 removed some well-known men from among us. 



We have hardly had time to recover from the shock of the 

 sad news of little more than a fortnight ago, when we learnt 

 that we had lost one of the most able entomologists of the day 

 in Mr. J. W. Tutt. He became a member of this Societ}- in 

 1886, was president in 1898, and would have been president 

 of the Entomological Society of London this year had he 

 lived. With the passing of Mr. Tutt one of the most remark- 

 able figures in entomology is severed from us. It is doubtful 

 if any man ever did more to raise the status of our favourite 

 science, and certainly no man ever did more for British ento- 

 mology. Like very many great men, at the commencement 

 of his career he had many opponents, but as the years passed 

 by he became understood, and the advanced lines of his work, 

 and the deeply earnest view he took of the scientific side of 

 entomology, at last commanded the enthusiasm and admira- 

 tion of nearly everybody. He will be sadly missed at our 

 meetings, where we could always rely on him to speak with 

 that authority, born of a great fund of knowledge, that is 

 given to few of us. The great work of his life was " A 

 Natural History of the British Lepidoptera," the first volume 

 of which appeared in i8gg. People were simply amazed 

 when this first volume appeared ; there had been no work to 

 compare with it in the scientific handling of the material, 

 while for general comprehensiveness it was quite exhaustive. 

 Five volumes have been published of the moths and three of 

 the butterfiies, the last of which was issued this year. 

 With each succeeding volume Mr. Tutt seemed to go deeper 

 and deeper into his subject, and Volume X, the last pub- 

 lished, treating on the " blues," reveals the man at the 

 summit of his power. It would take too long to e\'en men- 

 tion all the books and papers Mr. Tutt has published. " The 

 British Noctuas and their Varieties," in four volumes, pub- 

 lished in i8gi-2, is perhaps his second best known work, 

 and is still the standard work on the British Noctuae. In 

 1890 he started the monthly magazine known as the " Ento- 

 mologist's Record and Journal of Variation," and throughout 

 has acted as its editor. He wrote articles for, I believe, 

 every number, and some of the more important of these 

 were continued through several issues, such as " Migration 

 and Dispersal of Insects," and " Melanochroism in British 

 Lepidoptera." He also wrote some delightful popular books 

 on natural history, such as '' Random Recollections of Wood- 



