49 



any extraneous support whatsoever, contain in tliemselves the elements 

 of dissolution. 



It appears that during the year we have elected ten members and 

 three subscribers, and that we have lost three members by resignation 

 and one by death, and one subscriber by resignation, thus giving us 

 during the year an increase of six members and of two subscribers, a 

 state of affairs on which 1 think we have every reason to congratulate 

 ourselves : we have also elected, as corresponding members, Mr. Bates 

 and Mr. Wallace, of whose indefatigable industry I said so much on 

 the occasion of my last addressing you, and whose claims on us for 

 the little courtesy thus rendered them will be freely admitted by all of 

 you. 



It is mj' painful duty to say a few words of that member of whom 

 death has deprived us, on the very threshold of what appeared to all a 

 brilliant and a prosperous career. 



William Wing in early life was distinguished for his love of Natural 

 History and for the care and accuracy with which he depicted natural 

 objects : in the capacity of an artist he was frequently employed by 

 Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, and the range of objects he deline- 

 ated was very extensive: by degrees he appears to have turned his 

 attention more and more to Entomology. In 1847 he was elected a 

 member of our Society, and during the last and preceding years he 

 filled the ofBce of one of our Secretaries, but for many months he has 

 been disqualified by illness from attending to the onerous duties which 

 that office entails. He continued to employ his pencil in the cause of 

 Science, and many of the illustrations of the Catalogues of the British 

 Museum, of the Transactions of the Linnean, Zoological, and Ento- 

 mological Societies, and of several other publications, are the work of 

 liis hands: a paper of my own, just published in the Transactions of 

 our Society, owes any value it may possess to the surpassing accuracy 

 with which he depicted the perfect insects, and the artistic skill with 

 which, from very slender materials, he contrived to give most life-like 

 figures of the larva3. The illustrations of Mr. Stainton's volume on 

 Tineina are also by his pencil, and his last effort was to draw the 

 figures of Goniodoma auroguttella and Nepticula Weaveri for Mr. 

 Stainton's ' Entomologist's Annual.' About twelve months ago a 

 disease that almost always proves fatal exhibited itself, and this, acting 

 on a constitution predisposed to consumption, terminated his life on the 

 9th of the present month, while in his 28th year. He was distinguished 

 throughout his brief life by the most amiable and obliging manners, 

 and he will be equally regretted for the amenity of his disposition and 



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