334 Obituary— Mr. W. S. Dallas. 



He was educated at University College School, where he attained 

 a thorough grounding in Classics, in which he afterwards displayed 

 so great a proficiency. In later years he devoted himself to the 

 mastering of French, German, and Italian, with marked success; 

 and still later, to the acquisition of a knowledge of Danish, Swedish, 

 and Norwegian. 



His father failed when William was only twelve years of age, and 

 his elder brothers, John and James Dallas, had both to abandon 

 their prospect of a profession and enter business houses in the City. 

 William, on his leaving school, was also taken into Mr. Milne's 

 office ; but City life was so very distasteful to him, that he relinquished 

 it and commenced to study in the old Reading-Room of the British 

 Museum. Here his strong passion for the pursuit of Entomology 

 was allowed to dominate all else for a time, and so eager was the 

 young naturalist to possess a library of his own, that he not only 

 copied out large parts of various descriptive works on his favourite 

 science, but even went so far as to transcribe in neat handwriting 

 the whole text of J. Chris. Fabricius's " Entomologia Systematica " 

 (Tome I. to IV. 8vo. Hafnias, 1792) — a work of 2677 pages octavo — 

 to each generic description of which he added a coloured figure of 

 the type-species, copied from a specimen, or from some other work. 1 



His devotion to Natural History, and especially to the collecting 

 and preserving of Insects, attracted young Dallas to the Insect-room 

 at the British Museum, where, in the late Dr. John Edward Gray, 

 F.R.S., he found a warm friend and supporter. 



In 1847 he commenced to contribute original papers to the 

 Entomological Society of London, which duly appeared in its Trans- 

 actions from that year to 1853. 



In 1849 Mr. W. S. Dallas was elected a Fellow of the Linnasan 

 Society, and in the year following he married Miss Frances Esther 

 Price, youngest child of Liscombe Price, Esq., of London and Aber- 

 gavenny (one of the lawyers employed in the trial of Queen 

 Caroline). 



From 1850 to 1852 Mr. Dallas was engaged in preparing Lists 

 of the Hemipterous Insects in the British Museum. 



Immediately on the erection of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, 

 Mr. Dallas was engaged by the Committee to arrange the Natural 

 History collections in that building. 



From 1854 to the end of 1855 Mr. Dallas contributed 28 chapters 

 on Zoology to Orr's " Circle of the Sciences." These were afterwards 

 reprinted as a separate work, in 1856, entitled " A Natural History 

 of the Animal Kingdom." 



In 1857 he completed his "Elements of Entomology; an Outline 

 of the Natural History and .Classification of British Insects," 8vo. 

 pp. 424, published by Van Voorst. 



In 1858, on the resignation of Mr. Edward Charlesworth, F.G-S., 



1 Of "W. S. Dallas's brothers, only the second, Elmslie "W. Dallas, appears to 

 have taken up a scientific career. He settled in Edinburgh, and became an artist of 

 some repute, was author of a work on Mathematics, and was elected a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society of Edinburgh. 



