929 



OBITUARY. 



Robert Charles Wroughton. 



It is not given to many to do their most widely known and enduring work 

 after they have retired from their life's profession, but such was the hajipy lot 

 of R. C. Wroughton, whose death, in his 72nd year, occurred recentlj'. In sympa- 

 thy with those of us who have had the pleasure and advantage of working with 

 him in London of recent years, every member of the Bombay Natural History 

 Society will hear of Wroughton's loss with regret. 



Born at Nusserabad in 1849, the son of Major-General R. C. Wroughton, 

 himself an ardent sportsman and naturalist, Wroughton spent his early boyhood 

 in India, Avhere he imbibed his lasting taste for Xatural History. In due course 

 he obtained a position in the Indian Forest Service, seved there with distinction, 

 and finally became Inspector-General of Forests, with which rank he retired in 

 1904. During his period of service he was always a collector of Natural History 

 objects, giving his attention mainly to ants* of which he obtained a very consider- 

 able knowledge working in conjunction with the well known formicologist, Forel 

 of Switzerland, to whom he sent the abundant material he obtained. Then, 

 towards the end of his official careei', he took to collecting scorpions and myrio- 

 podst for the benefit of R. I. Pocock of the Natural History Museum, and 

 partb; through the latter's influence, he was induced to turn his attention to small 

 mammals, which in the end proved to be the group on which his permanent 

 reputation will stand. 



He began by collecting the series of bats on which his first mammal paper 

 " Some Konkan bats " (lS99)i was founded, and it was in working out these at 

 the Museum in South Kensington, during a visit home on furlough that he 

 found his metier as a mammalogist, in which capacity he later did so many years 

 admirable work. 



After his retirement in 1904, he settled at Chismck, and as a method of life 

 found it suited him well to golf two days a week and work at the Museum the other 

 four, thus carrj-ing on a sporting and scientific life well suited to his tastes and 

 character. 



His services he gave to the Museum freely and without stint, and it is quite 

 impossible to estimate how great was the benefit of that work to the authorities 

 of the Museum. The study of mammals was then taking on the modern phase 

 of the collecting and arranging of skins and skulls in large series, and the help 

 he gave in stimulating, collecting and in handling the material obtained was of 

 especial value at that time. 



Owing to the fact that, then as always, African material was the most 

 abundant in the accession-list, Wroughton took up to begin with the study of 

 the mammals of that continent as a speciality, and wrote quite a number of use- 

 ful papers on sucii collections as came in. He took a particulai- interest in the 

 mammals of South Africa, partly owing to the successful outcome of the Rudd 

 Expedition, which gave a stimulus to work in that part of the world, and partly 

 to a visit he made himself to relatives living m Natal. 



But he never had India far from his thoughts, and bitteriy deplored the very 

 inferior state of the National collection so far as our greatest dependency was 

 concerned. He was always on the look out to improve this state of things, 

 and at last his opportunity came with the accession of W. S. Millard to the man- 

 agement of the Bombay Natural History Society. _ 



For these two kindred spirits, the one in England and the other in India, 

 conceived and carried through the splendid idea of the B ombay Society's Mamma l 



• Our Ants ; R. C. WrouShtou. Journal, Bombay ISTat. Hist. See. Vol. VII, pp 1:",, IVS- 

 \ Two collections of Myriapoda from Coylon and S. India ; K. I. Pocock, loid., \il. Mi, i^-u 

 On a collection of Scorpions, ibid , Vol. VII, 295 ^ 



t Some Konkan Bats; E. C. Wrougiiton. ibid Vol. XIl, p. ' 16. 



